Convicted LI Abbot Finds New Life in City
During the 1980s, the Rev. William V. Ischie was known for getting people such as Harry and Leona Helmsley to donate land to his Setauket monastery – enabling them to take tax deductions on land that was appraised for Ischie at inflated prices.
The scheme got Ischie six months in a halfway house for committing federal tax fraud. It also put St. German of Alaska Eastern Orthodox Church in danger of foreclosure as lawyers tried to recoup $ 400,000 they said Ischie owed them for his tax-fraud defense.
Now, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Diodoros I, has settled with the lawyers, and the foreclosure proceeding has been dropped. But while the future of the Main Street site seems no longer tenuous, the existence of its former abbot is.
Ischie apparently was homeless in Manhattan, sleeping in Central Park, before arriving several months ago at Central Presbyterian Church on Park Avenue, according to its pastor, the Rev. William Pindar.
Pindar said he helped find the 67-year-old Ischie, known as Father Paul, housing at a monastery in East Harlem and got him started aiding the homeless.
”He has decided he wants to give whatever he has of the rest of his life to the City of New York,” Pindar said. ”He has a little flock.” Ischie visits homeless people on 42nd Street and in the drug-shooting galleries of East Harlem, Pindar said. He couldn’t be reached at St. Mark’s Orthodox Monastery, where he lives.
Ischie also has offered to set up a work-release program for Leona Helmsley, so she could be freed before January, when she is scheduled to be released after completing 21 months of a 4-year term for income-tax evasion, her Manhattan lawyer, Milton Gould, said. Gould said he has yet to discuss the offer with his client.
While Ischie sets up his new life, the Setauket church and monastery he left several months ago is continuing with its own.
On June 4, in State Supreme Court in Riverhead, the two Philadelphia law firms that represented Ischie – including one that held a mortgage on the monastery that Ischie had signed over – settled for a total of $ 200,000 with Diodoros I.
Diodoros I, one of several world leaders of Eastern orthodoxy, knew little of the troubles until around the time of the foreclosure action, said George Razis, a Queens lawyer representing him. St. German of Alaska will remain an Orthodox church but will change its name, Razis said. He said the patriarch would release details later.
Monks at the church did not want to discuss the changes. And church members, many from the former Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries, said privately that they fear the church will move to a more Greek Orthodox style.
Ischie founded St. German in 1974 and set up St. John of Rila monastery. A former Episcopal priest in Philadelphia, Ischie started the land donation program after St. German’s fell behind on mortgage payments and was nearly evicted.
After serving his sentence, Ischie returned to the Setauket church in a much-diminished role. Finally, he resigned as abbot last year and left for Manhattan several months ago as the foreclosure proceeding, and a pending sheriff’s sale, cast a cloud over the St. German community of about 50 families.
”I only know something was chasing him,” Pindar said.