Facing a staggering stack of more than 500 lawsuits alleging long-ago child sexual abuse by clergy, the Archdiocese of San Francisco, which oversees Catholic churches in Marin County, says it will “very likely” join more than a dozen dioceses across the U.S., including Oakland and Santa Rosa, and file for bankruptcy.
The lawsuits against some of Northern California’s oldest Roman Catholic institutions have come under a recent state law that made it easier to bring forward decades-old complaints.
But this latest wave is five times what the archdiocese faced two decades ago when the state last relaxed limits on filing long-ago abuse claims. A bankruptcy filing would add to a dark chapter for an archdiocese established during the California Gold Rush that now serves 450,000 Roman Catholics in three Bay Area counties and once oversaw the faith throughout Northern California and beyond.
“For several months now, with the assistance of our financial and legal advisors, we have been investigating the best options for managing and resolving these cases,” Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone wrote to parishioners Friday in a statement on the archdiocese’s website. “I am deeply saddened by the sinful acts and the damage caused to the lives of innocent children who put their trust in priests, staff, and volunteers of the church.”
Victim advocates blasted the announcement as a legal move that would limit payouts to the abused and avoid further disclosures that could invite new claims.
“It is all about protecting secrets first, and second, to reduce just compensation to the victims they have created,” SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in a statement that noted the San Francisco archdiocese is among few dioceses that have resisted publishing lists of credibly accused clergy. “The Archdiocese may indeed be morally bankrupt, as evidenced by their refusal to publish information about abusers that are known to them, but we doubt that they are really financially bankrupt.”
The decision comes months after the Diocese of Oakland filed for bankruptcy in May as it faced some 350 abuse claims, and the Diocese of Santa Rosa filed in March, facing about 220 claims. The Diocese of San Diego has indicated bankruptcy plans citing 400 claims, and is expected to file in the fall. The Diocese of Sacramento said earlier this year it is considering filing as well. The Diocese of Stockton resolved a 2014 bankruptcy in 2017.
By contrast, the Diocese of San Jose, established in 1981 and formerly part of the San Francisco archdiocese, “is not considering a bankruptcy proceeding,” spokeswoman Cynthia Shaw said Monday.
Dan McNevin, SNAP treasurer and an abuse victim from his days as an altar boy in Fremont, noted that most of the abusive priests in the South Bay were under the supervision of the San Francisco archdiocese at the time of their alleged actions.
There now are more than a dozen active bankruptcy cases involving Roman Catholic dioceses across the U.S., the most recent filing in the Diocese of Ogdensburg, New York, the sixth in that state, according to Catholic News Agency. Other active cases involve the dioceses of Santa Fe, New Orleans, Harrisburg, Penn., Camden, N.J. and Norwich, Conn.
Late last month, New York’s Diocese of Syracuse announced a $100 million settlement in its 2020 bankruptcy case, which victim lawyers called the second-largest to date by a Roman Catholic institution in bankruptcy.
Victim advocates said a San Francisco archdiocese filing is expected imminently as the first of its abuse cases is set to begin later this month, and the archdiocese said a filing would freeze all litigation.
Cordileone said a bankruptcy filing would allow the archdiocese to resolve all the claims at once rather than individually, speeding a fairer resolution for all the alleged victims, while ensuring the archdiocese can continue its ministry and charitable work in San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin counties. Individual parishes and schools would not be part of the bankruptcy.
The archdiocese would not say how much it expects to pay to settle claims but denied that bankruptcy is aimed at reducing payouts to abuse victims. The archdiocese said a bankruptcy would ensure those whose individual cases are heard earliest don’t have an advantage in reaching financial settlements.
The latest claims come under AB 218, a bill Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law in 2019 after Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed two earlier similar bills that made it easier for adults to file older claims. The law allowed those claims to be filed from 2020 through 2022.
Cordileone said that when California lawmakers in 2003 allowed a one-year period to bring otherwise barred child sex abuse claims, the archdiocese, through property sales and insurance, paid $68 million to settle about 100 accusers’ claims.
Cordileone, archbishop since 2012, said “the vast majority of the alleged abuse occurred in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and involved priests who are deceased or no longer in ministry.”
But McNevin said nearly 500 alleged abusers have been linked to the archdiocese, and questioned its handling of a former Marin Catholic High School lay teacher who resigned in May while Oakland police investigated complaints that he sent an inappropriate text to a youth altar server there. McNevin said initial disclosures to Marin Catholic families about the teacher’s departure didn’t reveal the gravity of the situation.
Peter Marlow, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said the school “did everything one could reasonably expect in this situation.”