From Seed Money Mighty Amounts Grow

WHEELING, W.Va. — The Rev. Jim Sobus saw skeptical faces when he handed out $10,000 at random to parishioners.

He gave 134 people envelopes containing $5 to $1,000 in cash, with the challenge to use the same zeal and ingenuity they exercise in secular affairs to make the seed money grow.

“They thought he was nuts,” said Cathy DeFruscio, a parishioner at St. Michael’s Church, the largest Roman Catholic church in the state.

Sobus was vindicated last Sunday--six months later--as parishioners craned their necks in the packed church to see the total revealed near the altar table: $51,490.62 returned, all to assist the needy in the Ohio Valley.

“If I told you I didn’t sleep last night, would you believe me?” Sobus joked during the service. “I never dreamed that the excitement would reach this level in the community.”

The money was raised a little at a time, by a teenager selling sodas at school, a doctor going door-to-door with brooms on his day off, an 82-year-old man selling 340 pounds of Italian sausage, a businessman soliciting $5,000 from his co-workers.

Sobus figured the best he could hope for was $30,000. He was pleasantly surprised as the figure exceeded expectations and then inspired other churchgoers to donate another $10,900.

The money will go far in the Ohio Valley, which has been hit hard by a seven-month strike by 4,500 Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp. workers.

A soup kitchen and homeless shelter will get money, as will a volunteer group that provides medical assistance to the working poor and jobless, Sobus said. A struggling parish and a church committee that helps pay groceries and utilities for the poor are among others to benefit.

The seed money was donated interest-free by an anonymous businessman who later told the church to keep it.

The priest based his idea on a parable in the Bible in which a master provided money to three servants.

Two of the servants used their ingenuity to double the money for their master, while the third servant, paralyzed by fear, buried it in the ground. Two servants were rewarded by the master, while the third was “cast into the outer darkness.”

Nicholas Maltese, 14, need not worry about that. The eighth-grade boy made $5 grow to $515.

Maltese bought sodas and sold them at school. Then he reinvested and continued selling. He also sponsored a basketball game between fellow students, held an Easter basket raffle and donned a Santa suit for pictures with kindergartners.

The only problem happened when a kindergartner pulled off his fake Santa beard. “After that, they started to cry,” Maltese said, but not before Santa made off with $40.