PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog
Ralph Cipriano
Every day for the past ten weeks, Msgr. William J. Lynn has been accompanied to trial by four full-time defense lawyers. A conservative estimate is that the archdiocese is spending $75,000 a week on those four defense lawyers, or $750,000 for the past ten weeks of trial.
But the costs of the archdiocese’s legal bill is much higher than that. In the archdiocese’s new financial report issued this month, it was disclosed that the church has spent $11.6 million in response to the 2011 grand jury investigation of the archdiocese.
In a letter to parishioners that accompanied the new financial report, Archbishop Charles Chaput said the church spent $1.6 million in the 2011 fiscal year, and another $10 million over nine months of the 2012 fiscal year that ended March 31.
“Following the grand jury report, nine separate civil lawsuits were filed in Philadelphia County against the Archdiocese and certain individual defendants based on alleged clergy sexual abuse of minors,” Chaput wrote. “As fiscal 2011 closed, the Archdiocese learned that its former CEO had embezzled nearly $1 million over a period of years.”
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