SYRACUSE (NY)
Post-Standard - Syracuse.com [Syracuse NY]
April 29, 2025
By Jon Moss
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse will face “financial hardships” in the years ahead as it pays its share of a $100 million fund for sex abuse survivors, a top official said Monday.
Stephen Breen, the diocese’s chief financial officer, testified in bankruptcy court that the diocese could be forced to sell property, fundraise aggressively or find ways to cut costs.
Breen said the diocese will do “everything we can to regain our financial strength.”
“We can make it through this,” he said.
Breen was one of three witnesses who testified at a confirmation hearing Monday on the diocese’s plan to exit bankruptcy.
The diocese originally filed for bankruptcy nearly five years ago in June 2020 as it faced a growing number of sex abuse lawsuits. About 400 sex abuse claims have been filed.
The centerpiece of the plan is the creation of a $100 million fund to pay abuse survivors if they end their lawsuits against the church. Breen provided new details Monday about the fund.
Half will be paid for by parishes, schools, missions and Catholic Charities. That $50 million is ready to go and is sitting in the bank, Breen said.
The diocese will cover the other half. It will draw on $20 million in cash and investments, Breen said, plus $30 million in loans from five diocese-affiliated nonprofits.
The nonprofits are:
- The Robert L. McDevitt, K.S.G., K.C.H.S. and Catherine H. McDevitt, L.C.H.S. Foundation
- Heritage Campaign
- Catholic Cemeteries of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse
- The Foundation of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse
- The Saint Thomas Aquinas Fund
It has become common around the country for Catholic dioceses to declare bankruptcy as a way to get more control over a mountain of abuse claims. Thousands of priests nationwide have been credibly accused of abuse, a scandal that has rocked the church for decades.
Headquartered in Syracuse, the diocese covers seven counties with nearly 200,000 members across 116 parishes, 10 missions and seven oratories. It employs about 3,000 people.
Other dioceses have downsized their operations when emerging from bankruptcy, while also dealing with a decline in church attendance.
Leaders in the bankrupt Albany diocese said they may close a third of its buildings.
The hearing on the Syracuse diocese was held in a large, third-floor courtroom in the federal building in Syracuse because of the number of out-of-town lawyers in attendance. It was expected to last about a week but ended up taking only a day.
A number of insurance companies had filed objections to the plan and were set to make oral arguments against it.
Then came what Wendy Kinsella, the chief U.S. bankruptcy judge for the Northern District of New York, described as a “tremendous” amount of effort last weekend.
A flurry of negotiations led most of the insurance companies to settle and withdraw their objections. They agreed to pay about $62 million into the survivor trust fund, raising the total amount to about $162 million.
Kinsella agreed to resume consideration of the plan on May 14 so lawyers for the diocese could try to reach a resolution with the three remaining insurance companies and a government-appointed trustee.
The trustee, Erin Champion, repeated much of her past criticism of the proposed plan.
Champion argued that the diocese did not do enough to show that survivors agreed to the plan, which would block survivors from pursuing further legal claims against the diocese and more than 250 other Catholic institutions.
The trustee’s office won a 5-4 decision last year from the U.S. Supreme Court that said these protections can’t be provided without proper “consent.” It did not specify how consent would be shown.
The roughly 84% of abuse survivors who returned a ballot voted unanimously in favor of the plan. Champion noted the other 63, or 16%, of survivors who did not vote on the plan would still be bound by its terms.
“The plan turns silence into surrender,” she said.
Abuse survivors did not speak during the confirmation hearing.
A special hearing was held last week so survivors could recount what happened to them. A packed courtroom, which included Bishop Douglas Lucia, listened for six hours to the stomach-turning descriptions of abuse and the scars left behind.
Staff writer Jon Moss covers breaking news, crime and public safety. He can be reached at jmoss@syracuse.com or @mossjon7.