A spokesman said that the investigation would find whether donations earmarked for the St. Nicholas Shrine were among those raided for general expenses. But internally, it has already been acknowledged.

Image The St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church that stood near the base of the World Trade Center towers and was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001.



Credit... St. Nicholas Church, via Associated Press

In a December letter, Father Alex Karloutsos, the director of public affairs at the archdiocese and the shrine’s main fund-raiser, assured donors that “there will be investigations into how funds were transferred from the St. Nicholas account and let there be no doubt that they will be returned.”

“You have trusted me with your precious resources, your confidence and your friendship,” he told them. “I will not let you down.”

Some members of the church have called for the archbishop to be removed.

“The faithful have lost trust in this archdiocese and this archbishop,” said Gregory C. Pappas, the publisher of The Pappas Post, and a former member of the archdiocesan council. “Some parishes are not giving their annual dues to the archdiocese. Individuals are not donating anymore.”

Steve Stratakos, a commercial real estate appraiser based in Illinois, said his charitable organization, the Pan-Icarian Brotherhood, had been approached for donations for the shrine but declined. Without greater transparency, he said, there is no way to know whether the project was being managed appropriately.

“The feeling out there among the rank-and-file now is that this project was used as a cash cow for the archdiocese, which has been hemorrhaging money for years now,” he said. “It outraged me. You have that beautiful site down there at the Trade Center, and that thing might sit there like a rotted tooth for the next five years.”

The archdiocese said in an email that it was hopeful that construction would resume as early as the spring. It added that design work and the construction of skylights and parts of the marble and glass-fused curtain-wall and lighting system that will ultimately allow the church to glow at night were continuing off-site.