The Los Angeles Archdiocese plans to pay its share of a record clergy sexual abuse settlement by liquidating investments, taking out bank loans and selling up to 50 non-parish properties, including its administrative headquarters, according to diocesan representatives.
Many details of the complex financial arrangements were still being worked out, officials said, with the $660-million settlement having been formalized just Monday in a Los Angeles courtroom.
But some elements have emerged, as the archdiocese readies itself to pay at least $250 million and up to $373 million -- its portion of the bill.
Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and others have said the archdiocese, which drained its litigation reserve fund in payouts for a partial clergy-abuse settlement in December, will try to avoid harming "essential ministries" and does not plan to sell any parish or school properties.
Still, the archdiocese, the most populous in the country, "will have to be a much leaner operation than it is now," church attorney J. Michael Hennigan said. "The liquidity it has comes from investments that produce income that supports diocesan operations."
In late May, as settlement talks between the archdiocese and plaintiffs' attorneys accelerated, Mahony traveled to Rome to consult with Vatican officials on financial aspects of the settlement and to receive required approvals for the loans and property sales under consideration, officials said.
The Vatican requires such permission for any transfer of goods -- real estate, cash, investments or loans -- worth more than $10 million, said Mahony's spokesman, Tod M. Tamberg. But he said Mahony and other archbishops or bishops must also have the consent of local diocesan bodies, including finance councils, before they can proceed with such sales.
The archdiocese promised victims $250 million and agreed to guarantee payment of an additional $123 million in the event a number of religious orders that are not yet part of the agreement do not agree to pay. The church's insurers will pay $227 million and other religious orders will pay $60 million.
Tamberg and Hennigan said they could not yet give a breakdown for which portions of the bill would be covered by the sale of investments or real estate, or from loans.
The first property to go on the market, however, appeared likely to be a 12-story building at 3424 Wilshire Blvd., which houses offices for the archdiocese's central administration, ministries and other services.
