A Seattle Times piece on the financial disaster of the Spokane Diocese
The Archdiocese of Milwaukee is going ahead with plans to sell the Cousins Center in St. Francis and has launched a major communications effort, partly to prepare its 700,000 Catholics for what might be "staggering financial consequences" as 10 lawsuits filed against it by victims of clergy sexual abuse move toward trials in California.
Katherine Freberg, an attorney representing eight of the victims, said Thursday that the archdiocese has expressed interest in seeking settlements while also indicating "there’s a possibility they will file for bankruptcy."
"When we hear that from a defendant, we are very suspicious that a mediation would not be very fruitful," added Freberg, who noted that average settlements of clergy sexual abuse lawsuits in California "certainly are over $1 million."
Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, who has acknowledged in the past that bankruptcy could be a last-resort option, did not rule it out in his Herald of Hope column and in his quotes in a news story devoted to sexual abuse issues in Thursday’s Catholic Herald.
"The issue of going into bankruptcy would be extremely painful and would only come after extensive consultation with the advisory groups of the archdiocese, and as a last resort," Jerry Topczewski, Dolan’s chief of staff, said Thursday in an interview. "The financial and operating tension that you live under is to do everything you can do to help the victim-survivors while continuing to fund the ministries and mission and of the church here in southeastern Wisconsin.
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