San Francisco parishes hit with massive bills for sex abuse settlement
- 17 hours ago
- 1 min read
by Sean Piccoli
(NCR logo/Toni-Ann Ortiz)
When the Archdiocese of San Francisco announced in late June that it would pay $395 million to hundreds of people who were sexually abused as children by Bay Area priests, archdiocesan leaders also quietly sent word to local parishes, schools and other church-run facilities: The cost of the archdiocese’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy settlement would be theirs to bear, too.
Soon after, the bills — called assessments — began arriving, with news of each parish's obligation spelled out in letters from pastors and meetings with parish officers across an archdiocese that is home to 442,000 Catholics in San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin counties. In a letter, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone wrote that the archdiocese could not shoulder the settlements alone.
"For the past decades, the chancery has handled these claims and shouldered the financial burden for any settlements with the goal of shielding our parishes and schools and other members of the local Catholic family," he wrote. "This simply was not possible in this round of lawsuits."
