This Is the Luxury Home Former Bishop Farrell Occupied During His Time in Dallas

This actually came out in 2014, but I missed it until just recently.  An “anonymous donor” (perhaps a certain former cardinal, or an ally of his?) mysteriously gifted this luxury home to now Cardinal Farrell just immediately as he arrived in Dallas, and the home was sold instantly upon his departure.  No other occupant of the episcopal see of Dallas has ever lived in such lavish circumstances, to my knowledge.  Ostensibly, this home was to allow Farrell to entertain the great and the rich, to pull donations from them.  Somehow both his predecessor and successor managed to entertain potential donors without recourse to such luxurious surroundings.  There is absolutely no concrete evidence that this home was associated with any particular donations. There were occasional, frankly unbelievable, statements from Farrell that he really just wanted to have a poor little apartment, but was just forced, forced, you see, by the hard life of being a bishop to live in such ostentatious circumstances, and this in a diocese that was then, and remains – or so we are told – essentially existing in penury.

I frankly find it preposterous, and even insulting, this claim that soliciting donations made such a home absolutely necessary.  As if donors would not donate if not entertained in extremely comfortable surroundings?  Please.  This was for Farrell, who has made personal comfot a focal point in his episcopal career, from his days in the corrupt and decadent Legionaires of Christ to his cardinalate in Rome, where he was the recipient of nearly $30,000 from the corrupt and fallen Bishop Bransfield of West Virginia to to help pay for his living expenses in Rome. Apparently, the extravagance Farrell lavished on himself in terms of living arrangements was not limited to Dallas.  After the scandal broke about this sodomite, drug-addicted Bishop Bransfield (another creature of the Washington, DC circle of graft, immorality, and self-pleasing surrounding McCarrick, Wuerl, and, yes, Kevin J. Farrell), Farrell ostensibly returned the money, but why would bishops be in the habit of personally gifting each other tens of thousands of dollars? One of Farrell’s defenses in this case was that this kind of thing goes on all the time, and is no big deal.

Below, Farrell’s 6100 square foot home in a very expensive section of North Dallas.  Bought for $1.2 million in 2007, today it is worth north of $2 million.  Taxes alone on this property would be in the vicinity of $30,000 a year.  It had over 1000 square feet of garage and occupied nearly half an acre of extremely expensive land.

You can decide why a supposedly celibate priest would need to live in such circumstances.  If those walls could talk, eh?

I’m sure they’d tell a tale of superior virtue and rigid self-denial, right?  I kid.  But just on a purely human level, this is an exceedingly poor look for a Catholic bishop, and practically invites scandal.  Especially in a diocese that was supposedly flat busted, monetarily, from the Rudy Kos payout.  Yes, yes, anonymous donor, yes, supposedly Farrell raised money at this house (impossible to prove, of course), but our bishops are supposed to be our guides in all aspects of the Faith, and set a personal example for all us.  Saintly bishops produce saintly laity.  And vice versa.