CHARLOTTE — The Diocese of Charlotte has earned a perfect financial transparency rating from a national Catholic watchdog group – one of only five dioceses in the U.S. to earn this distinction.
The financial transparency ranking comes from the Voice of the Faithful, an independent Catholic lay organization founded in 2002 in Boston in response to the sexual abuse crisis in the Church. It seeks full transparency and accountability in Church governance.
The group awarded the Charlotte diocese a perfect score of 100 percent after a thorough analysis of the diocese’s financial reporting online at www.charlottediocese.org/finance. There, the diocese has publicly posted complete annual financial audits going back six years. Also posted are the diocese’s financial policy manual, gift acceptance policy information, internal control questionnaires, members of the diocesan finance council and governance standards, parish accounting tools and tips, parish finance council guidelines and parish benchmarking charts.
Bill Weldon, the diocese’s chief financial officer, said he is gratified the diocese has achieved the goal of perfect financial transparency.
“The primary pillars of good financial governance are accountability and transparency,” Weldon said. “The Diocese of Charlotte is accountable to every one of the faithful that comprise the Church in western North Carolina. To that end, we issue a complete audited financial report every year. We go beyond that by providing financial information for all major ministries and activities of the diocese in our annual financial report. In addition to having the combined financial statements of the diocese audited annually, we have annual audits of the nine distinct entities that comprise the diocese.”
Other audits include Catholic Charities Diocese of Charlotte, Mecklenburg Area Catholic Schools, Bishop McGuinness High School, Diocese of Charlotte Housing Corp., Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte Foundation and St. Joseph College Seminary.
“The diocese’s commitment to the second pillar – transparency – is evident by the high rating we received from the Voice of the Faithful,” Weldon said. “We sincerely believe that we have a responsibility to be fully transparent to all the faithful of the diocese.”
“As chief financial officer of the diocese, my primary responsibilities are to ensure that the Church’s assets are properly safeguarded and are used prudently and consistently with donor intentions; to provide complete, accurate and timely financial statements and reports; to publish and make critical financial data easily accessible to our donors and other constituents; and to ensure the continued good financial health of the diocese,” Weldon said.
The financial transparency review was conducted by four independent reviewers from VOTF. The four other dioceses to earn a perfect score were the Diocese of Anchorage, Alaska; the Diocese of Erie, Pa.; the Diocese of Philadelphia; and the Diocese of Rochester, N.Y.
Since its founding, VOTF has expanded worldwide with more than 30,000 members.
The group’s 2019 study also found that:
n 65 percent of U.S. dioceses have exhibited a commitment to financial transparency by sharing audited financial reports on their websites.
n The percentage of U.S. dioceses posting audited financial reports has risen from 56 percent in 2017 to 61 percent in 2018 to 65 percent in 2019.
n Eight percent of the dioceses provided only unaudited reports in 2019, and the remaining 27 percent posted no financial information at all.
The VOTF study concluded that, although most dioceses have made a commitment to financial transparency, a sizable majority share little or no verifiable financial information with their parishioners. The average overall score achieved by all 177 dioceses in the 2019 report was 65.25 percent.
— SueAnn Howell, senior reporter