View Comments      Email Article       Printable Version

Published: May 1, 2008

“Where we are now as Church”

Woodland Hills parish donates most of its savings to help the Los Angeles archdiocese pay sexual abuse settlements

To help the Los Angeles archdiocese pay off the “crippling debt” accrued from sexual abuse settlements, St. Bernardine of Siena parish in Woodland Hills will donate most of its savings – about $1.5 million – to the archdiocese, the parish bulletin announced on Sunday.

In a letter to the parish, its pastor, Fr. Robert McNamara, said his decision to donate the money came after meetings with the elected parish council and finance committee. The first meeting, he said, featured “some heated exchanges” and a wide “range of opinion,” with some in favor of “giving all our savings to giving nothing.” The second meeting two weeks later, said McNamara, was “more subdued … We were now more clearly looking at the ‘situation,’ meaning we were trying to see where we are now as Church, and what we need to do, to move forward.” Though the “consensus” was that the parish should give something, there was no agreement on the dollar amount. Finally, said McNamara, the “consensus” was to support whatever decision he made.

McNamara’s decision was in response to an archdiocesan recovery strategy to pay its portion of the sexual abuse settlement as well as ease its financial recovery from the settlements. The strategy includes increasing parish assessments by two percent, reducing archdiocesan administrative costs by 10%, and requesting grants, pledges, and loans from parishes. As a last resort, the archdiocese will consider selling additional properties beyond the 51 it has slated for sale.

According to the March 14 Tidngs, the archdiocesan newspaper, from two sexual abuse settlements – last year’s “global settlement” of 508 cases and a December 2006 settlement of 45 cases – the archdiocese has agreed to pay $720 million. Of this amount, the archdiocese is paying $292 million; insurance companies, $236 million; while religious orders and other defendants are paying or will pay $118 million. A religious order that did not participate in the global settlement will pay a portion of the remaining $74 million, leaving an estimated $50 million, which the archdiocese will probably pay.

According to the Tidings, Cardinal Mahony said he had expected insurance companies to pay a larger portion of the settlements; but Orange diocese’s decision in 2005 to pay 50% of its settlement changed the playing field. "They acted as they saw was the best course at the time. I don't fault them for that," Mahony said. "But their arrangement whereby the diocese paid 50 percent and the insurance companies paid 50 percent also became a new level."

To pay its share of the settlement, the archdiocese received a bank loan of $175 million and sold investments worth $117 million. To pay off part of the loan, the archdiocese expects to sell 51 archdiocesan properties, estimated at $107 million. The archdiocese this month took out another loan of $50 million, using several school properties as collateral. The sale of archdiocesan investment assets will result in a budget deficit of about $12 million a year, which the archdiocese hopes to recover by administrative cost reductions and other measures.

Reflecting on a quote from Mother Teresa – “If you don’t need it, it belongs to someone else” – McNamara wrote that he recalled his parish’s past generosity to missions and victims of natural disasters. “You have given like a people who wanted to make a difference, and a difference you did make,” wrote McNamara. This inspired him to give all of the parish’s savings except $1,000 (“to keep the account open”) to the archdiocese.

The donation does not break the parish, wrote McNamara. “Both parish and school have endowments of approximately $500,000 and $450,000 respectively,” he wrote. “Also, the parish has an emergency maintenance fund of approximately $540,000.”

© California Catholic Daily 2008. All Rights Reserved.