Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United States has provided the requisite quota of breathlessly televised pageantry. But the most dramatic moment in his brief visit surely was his meeting with three Catholics who, as children, suffered sexual abuse at the hands of priests.
Benedict called for the church to do more for the thousands who endured similar outrages. Los Angeles' Cardinal Roger M. Mahony echoed that sentiment following the meeting. "We've got to face it [the abuse crisis] head on and deal with it," he told The Times. The pope, he said, "asked us to set a better tone in the church."
Back in Los Angeles, where the archdiocese reached a record $660-million settlement with hundreds of abuse victims last summer, Mahony is already engaged in an unprecedented exercise that sheds light on what that new tone may entail.
Archdiocese: An April 19 column by Tim Rutten said the Archdiocese of Los Angeles took out a $50-million bank loan to fund a global settlement of clerical abuse cases. In fact, the archdiocese borrowed $175 million. As noted in the column, the total liability in all such cases is $720 million, but the column failed to note that a substantial portion of that is covered by insurance.
Combined with an earlier payout, the 2007 settlement brought the archdiocese's total liability to $720 million. When Mahony announced the agreement, he pledged that it would not involve the sale of any parish or school properties, as has occurred in other dioceses. Most local Catholics took that as an assurance that their parishes wouldn't be asked to pay for pedophiles.
In the months since, however, the cardinal and his lay financial advisors have decided that the archdiocese -- which already has drastically cut staff, sold real estate and liquidated investments -- must seek help from at least some of its parishes if it is to repay a bank loan of about $50 million that was taken out to cover part of the settlement.
There are 288 parishes in the archdiocese, and their money is held in a common investment pool -- currently $600 million -- managed by the archdiocese. Many older, more affluent parishes have what amount to endowments built up over many years. In February, Mahony wrote to the pastors of 101 parishes, telling them that because they are part of "a group of parishes with cash investments of $1 million or more ... I am asking you and your parish leaders to consider ways to assist me and our local church" with outright grants or no- or low-interest loans. Depending on the amount of their uncommitted investments, Mahony suggested that the individual parishes contribute as much as $400,000. Theoretically, the cardinal could simply order the parishes to contribute, but he has declined to do so.
