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New Orleans Catholic Church Offers $62.5MIL After Abuse Victims Seek $1BIL

Archdiocese?s proposal comes as survivors of sexual abuse by clergy request ?very reasonable? $1bn to settle claim

The Guardian 15 SEP 2024

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With a self-imposed deadline looming to file a plan to reorganize New Orleans? bankrupt Roman Catholic archdiocese, a committee representing about 500 survivors of clergy sexual abuse in south-east Louisiana on Friday proposed that the organization, its affiliated churches, ministries, schools and their insurers should pay more than $1bn to settle their claims.

The archdiocese quickly answered with its counter-proposal: $62.5m, or more than $900m less.

Looking at it another way, the survivors are seeking $2m per claim ? the church is offering $125,000 on average.

The vast majority of the money in the abuse claimants? proposal ? roughly $800m ? should come from insurance companies, according to the plan filed on Friday in US bankruptcy court by a negotiating committee representing the abuse creditors. Meanwhile, the archdiocese should pay $84m and its affiliates ? known as apostolates ? should chip in $133m.

In the church?s competing plan, the archdiocese was prepared to offer $50m and its apostolates $12.5m. Nothing additional would come from the archdiocese?s insurers.

The church?s proposal includes non-monetary considerations, but it did not immediately file any of those details. New Orleans?s archbishop, Gregory Aymond, has said he planned to disclose documents on clergy abusers that the church has long fought to keep secret.

In a letter to Catholics in the region, Aymond said the church was negotiating ?actions that we publicly pledge to take to continue our commitment to ensuring our parishes, schools, and ministries are safe places for all to grow in faith, be educated, and to participate in ministry?.

The archdiocese has already paid about $40m in legal and professional fees to go through the bankruptcy process so far ? well over the $7m that the church initially claimed that the proceeding could cost. And none of those costs will be paid by insurance, church officials have told WWL Louisiana, a CBS affiliate.

Any final settlement plan would have to be approved by the majority of abuse survivor claimants.

The San Diego archdiocese?s 2007 bankruptcy settlement was the most lucrative for abuse claimants, with the church and its insurers paying more than $198m to 144 victims ? an average of $1.4m per claim. San Diego?s archdiocese declared bankruptcy again in June.