Atheist donates $5.6m to New York Archdiocese

It’s the latest of many gifts from Wilson to the city’s Catholic hierarchy and educators, this one aimed at funding the Catholic Alumni Partnership, a program he founded that helps elementary schools track down their 750,000 alumni and recruit them as donors.

“Most of what the Catholic schools teach are the three R’s,’’ said Wilson, 83, referring to reading, writing and arithmetic. “And they do it better than the union-controlled inner-city schools.’’

Wilson, a Detroit native, said he began questioning the existence of God after enrolling in Amherst College.

“Religious people say you couldn’t have our surrounding environment without the creator, but then who created the creator?’’ Wilson said.

He made his fortune as a stock investor, taking $15,000 in 1949 and turning it into $225 million by 1986 when he retired at age 60.

He stopped investing after retirement and entrusted his wealth to a dozen money managers. He then started giving money to conservation causes such as the World Monuments Fund, Nature Conservancy, and the Wildlife Conservation Society. Wilson said he has donated more than $550 million and wants to give away 70 percent of his wealth before he dies.

Wilson began donating to the New York Archdiocese in 1997 with a gift of $10,000, and he continued at that level for several years. Then Susan George, executive director of the Inner-City Scholarship Fund, asked him to consider giving more money to the schools. Wilson responded in 2007 with a $22.5 million gift to the archdiocese’s Cardinal’s Scholarship Program. He later saw a need for a better alumni support network.

“I realized that Catholic schools were closing all over the country, and Bill Gates probably didn’t have enough money to save them,’’ said Wilson. “Every private school I hear of relies on alumni support, whether it’s the Groton School or the universities.’’

So Wilson launched CAP in 2008 with a $2.7 million gift and then gave $5.6 million this summer to set up fund-raising programs in the schools.

His atheism was not an issue with the archdiocese. Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York said in an e-mail that he was grateful to Wilson.

“With a Catholic education, I can take the poorest kid in the most negative family situation and send him to college,’’ said Cardinal Edward Egan, New York’s archbishop from 2000 to 2009.