BUFFALO (NY)
Tablet [New York NY]
July 9, 2025
By Maggie Phillips
As New York dioceses declare bankruptcy amid a wave of scandals, churchgoers are appealing to the Vatican to stop parish closures
When the papal conclave elected the first American pope on May 8 of this year, much of the excitement over Pope Leo XIV overlooked an inconvenient reality in his home country. In many places, the U.S. Catholic Church is enmeshed in legal and financial woes stemming from decades of clerical abuse and cover-ups. The dam broke in the early 2000s, when a Boston Globe exposé on clerical abuse made national news and victims in other dioceses began coming forward. In New York state, the Child Victims Act became law in 2019 and extended the statute of limitations for underage abuse survivors to file suit. According to law firm Jeff Anderson & Associates, which represents many Catholic clerical abuse victims throughout New York, over 3,300 child sexual abuse lawsuits were filed in the state between Aug. 14, 2019, and May 21, 2021. The suits variously involved the Catholic Church, its affiliated organizations, its clergy, and its employees. Some 27% are alleged to have taken place in the Diocese of Buffalo.
The ensuing five years have created still more conflict between Church leadership and the faithful. Buffalo is one of six New York dioceses out of eight currently undergoing Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, having filed in early 2020. In September of that year, the Diocese of Buffalo launched the euphemistically titled Road to Renewal, a tranche of structural and financial changes it says have been brought about by the Chapter 11 process, as well as a priest shortage and fewer Catholics in the area overall. Many parishioners contend the diocese is protecting itself at the expense of parishes, shifting the financial burden onto lay people’s shoulders, partly via the collection plate, but partly through plans to close what the faithful maintain are often vibrant parishes. But the diocese, already tangling with the New York state legal system, could now find itself crosswise with the canon law of the Roman Catholic Church, a codification of centuries of ecclesiastical norms, traditions, and laws.
At the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025, a group of lay people calling themselves Save Our Buffalo Churches took their case to the Vatican, appealing their bishop’s plans to close their parishes. By April, over 10 parishes had received letters from the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Clergy, which oversees all matters related to priests and clergy. The Dicastery, they learned, had agreed to review their claims that the bishop was closing their parishes in error. The Diocese of Buffalo must now figure out how to render unto Caesar and God their respective dues.
Decline is no stranger to New York Catholics. Even before the Child Victims Act, broader secularization trends compounded the hollowing out of the state’s industrial cities and towns. The parishioners to whom I spoke see the current threat to their parishes as qualitatively different.
Catholic churches in formerly Catholic New York enclaves have been sold and turned into Hindu temples, worship spaces for millenarian Korean religious movements, and mosques. “They’re selling [churches] to the people who have the money, and it doesn’t seem like they care who takes it,” said Mary Pruski, who is the public relations contact for Save Our Buffalo Churches. She said the organization was formed in July of last year, after it became evident there was little secular legal recourse for Buffalo Catholic parishes who wished to fight closure and subsequent sale to the highest bidder.
Although a church closure and a parish merger sound like interchangeable terms, they are not the same thing. A parish, as described by canon lawyer Philip Gray on a podcast in February, “is the people,” whereas churches are buildings that can be closed, desacralized, and sold. According to the Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law, “A parish is a certain community of the Christian faithful stably constituted in a particular church, whose pastoral care is entrusted to a pastor,” which typically “includes all the Christian faithful of a certain territory.” After a merger, a diocese will often gerrymander the surrounding parish boundaries to absorb the members of the merged parish.
Since Chapter 11 puts a stay on existing trials, it muffles the public embarrassment that multiple ongoing legal proceedings would cause.
On paper, canon law is relatively straightforward on merging a parish. After consulting with the affected congregation and an advisory group of priests, the bishop of a diocese issues a decree announcing his decision to merge a parish with another one or with another cluster of parishes. These consultations are supposed to be good-faith efforts to determine that “a just cause does exist to merge the parish,” Gray said.
The degree of harm that will be done to the congregation if the parish is extinguished is the question at the heart of this entire process. “The legitimate cause that a bishop has to show is that he can provide at least the same level—but the jurisprudence says better—pastoral care of the faithful involved,” Gray said.
This rationale may seem paradoxical. How could shuttering a community be a net benefit, particularly when the members don’t want it closed? However, a 2007 explainer from Catholic Answers, a popular Catholic apologetics site, suggests that congregations protesting the end of their parish represent a fairly recent trend reversal. “In most cases,” the article states, “The request [for a parish merger] will come from the pastor and parishioners themselves after a period of discernment.”
According to a 2020 document put out by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Clergy, the criteria for a legitimate cause are high, and “do not include reasons like the lack of clergy, demographic decline or the grave financial state of the diocese.” According to Gray, several of these reasons together can constitute a just cause. “But those multiple causes have to be what we say in canon law are ad rem to the parish,” he said, “meaning that they are specific to that parish.”
Each of the bishop’s decrees must be specific to the individual parish he intends to merge with another; he must also inform parishioners that if they wish to appeal his decision, they have 10 calendar days to postmark a reply. An appeal puts the ball back in the bishop’s court, and he then has 30 days to respond. The clock resets if the parishioners receive an unsatisfactory (or no) response when the 30 days are up, and they then have 15 more calendar days to postmark an appeal to the Dicastery for the Clergy in Rome. The Dicastery has 90 days to respond. In the case of the Buffalo parishes, it took almost all of it. “We were getting nervous and then all of a sudden we got a batch of them,” Pruski said. “We’ll take it. It’s just so affirming that the Vatican is seeing our transparency in what’s going on and taking it from there and investigating.”
According to Pam Foohey, a professor at the University of Georgia School of Law and the co-author of a 2023 Virginia Law Review article titled “Silencing Litigation Through Bankruptcy,” it is common for nondenominational churches to file for bankruptcy. Many are Black churches that have fallen victim to predatory lending practices. However, Foohey says, the Catholic Church has coopted the Chapter 11 process.
Foohey points out that Chapter 11 bankruptcy was designed as a kind of public-private partnership to preserve a common good—a corporation that employed people and buoyed the economy and community—while helping creditors recoup their losses. She contends that the rules have since been exploited by Catholic dioceses, and subsequently by other public individuals and organizations, from Harvey Weinstein to USA Gymnastics in the aftermath of the Larry Nassar abuse revelations. She said in a phone interview that in essence, the current bankruptcy system allows a diocese to turn the legal process on its head, with the accused now bringing the accuser into court, and requiring them to file a claim by a certain date in order to be part of any potential settlement structure. Moreover, since Chapter 11 puts a stay on existing trials, it muffles the public embarrassment that multiple ongoing legal proceedings would cause.
“Conceptually, it does work,” said Foohey. In the Diocese of Buffalo, abuse victims are represented by a committee of survivors who together with the diocese and its insurance companies, enter into a lengthy confidential mediation process. “With victims of abuse—and not people owed money on a contractual basis, who knew they were getting into this kind of legal scheme with a business—the question becomes, do they want a pot of money?” Foohey explained, “or do they also want the ability to have discovery for themselves and be able to stand in front of someone within the church and say, ‘You wronged me’?”
In April, the Diocese of Buffalo announced it would be paying victims $150 million, with funds coming from its own coffers, and more than half the total from individual parishes. This news was a reversal, since parishioners were assured when the diocese filed for bankruptcy in 2020 that the diocese could not use parish assets or property to settle claims. But it did not come as a surprise. “As we have maintained throughout this protracted process, the participation of the entire Catholic family is necessary to bring to a close this painful chapter of our diocese,” Bishop Michael Fisher said in a June 9 statement. Some parishioners feel that this is rubbing salt in the wound amid the parish mergers. “Part of the propaganda line of the Road to Renewal,” said Bill Brach, who attends Ascension Parish in Batavia, New York, “is that we’re all collectively guilty for these acts of the priests.”
Further complicating matters is the fact that what’s true for the Holy See is not always the same for Uncle Sam. Gray said in February that bankruptcy proceedings do not constitute a rationale for parish mergers under canon law precedent. “You’ve got canon law and you’ve got civil law,” said Jeff Anderson & Associates attorney Stacey Benson, who represents victims in the Diocese of Buffalo, “and they clash oftentimes.”
“By law in New York, the bishop is president of every parish corporation,” said Taylor Stippel, also a Jeff Anderson attorney. “The parishes are the diocese.” If the diocese is to emerge from the Chapter 11 process with a clean slate, its affiliated entities will need a clean slate, too. And that means paying up. As diocesan communications director Joe Martone explained, by paying $80 million (of the $150 million total), the parishes, through the channeling injunction sought by the diocese, will receive protection from any future claims.
“Because they didn’t file bankruptcy, the parishes need to contribute [money],” said Foohey. “The parishes are going to get what are called third-party releases, which means that in the future, the people who are the tort victims who are paid out in this case can’t later sue the parishes themselves.” Foohey questions whether the American Catholic Church writ large can’t contribute more. “This is the Catholic Church,” she said, “You’re everywhere. Is it really true that you do not have enough money as an entire religious organization, absent your corporate organizational structure, to pay everyone who has been abused 100%?”
But the “American Catholic Church” as such does not exist. It is not a national church with a governing body. Rather, it is a patchwork of dioceses and archdioceses, each with their own internal financial procedures and controls (this has contributed to a different financial problem, embezzlement, as individual priests and parish employees exploit the lack of coherence).
It is faith in God—not in the Church hierarchy—that keeps the people involved in Save Our Buffalo Churches coming back.
New York Catholics in Buffalo and elsewhere insist that their dioceses have the money to compensate abuse victims through the sale of Fidelis, a nonprofit health insurance plan that all eight New York dioceses sponsored. The Archdiocese of New York has denied that they or any other New York dioceses owned or controlled Fidelis—but in 2017, all eight New York bishops voted unanimously with Fidelis’ board of directors to sell the insurance company. Fidelis sold for $3.75 billion in 2018, and proceeds were used to start the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, a nonprofit grantmaking institution. Per its website, Cabrini’s mission is to “improve the health and wellbeing of vulnerable New Yorkers, bolster the health outcomes of diverse communities, eliminate barriers to care, and bridge gaps in health services.”
Cabrini reported $3.69 billion in net assets for 2023 in the most recent financial report on its website. The archdiocese has also denied that the sale was tied to the passage of the Child Victims Act. Both the parishioners fighting church closure and victim advocates remain skeptical of these claims.
The Fidelis sale fits a pattern set by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who has been archbishop of New York since 2009. In 2013, The New York Times reported that when Dolan was archbishop in Milwaukee, the archdiocese transferred nearly $57 million to an independent cemetery fund that would shield it from being accessed by abuse victims. “I foresee an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability,” Dolan, then archbishop of Milwaukee, wrote in a 2007 letter to the Vatican asking for permission to move the money. Dolan’s archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in 2011.
Separate legal entities like Cabrini and the Milwaukee cemetery fund do not belong to diocesan estate property, so dioceses can make the case that these funds are not theirs to disseminate for victim compensation. But according to a 2021 Albany Times Union article on Cabrini, New York bishops are controlling members of the nonprofit who appoint the board. The Cabrini CEO is a former vicar general (a sort of chief operating officer) of the Archdiocese of New York.
For both victim advocates and parish closure opponents, the Cabrini money remains a live issue. “This goes to the mental health care of the people who were abused,” Pruski said of a hypothetical use of Cabrini Foundation funds to settle with abuse survivors. “You still have lots of money, and you’re still taking care of your people, and we can call this a day and close the books on this.”
Buffalo is one of six diocesan bankruptcy declarations in New York state, out of a nationwide total of 37. Nineteen of those bankruptcy proceedings are active.
In Albany, the diocese filed for bankruptcy in 2023. Earlier this year, the diocese announced the closure of one of its three K-8 schools, All Saints Catholic Academy. I spoke with school parent Kelly Barbour in March, shortly after the announcement. “The parents are now in a panic,” she said. The diocese said together with two other schools, All Saints was operating at a deficit, and cited the repair costs and insufficient tuition. “What we believe,” Barbour said, “is that they need the money to pay off the victims.”
Diocese of Albany spokeswoman Kathryn Barrans told me on March 31 that she was not aware of any plans to sell the All Saints property. A week later, Bishop of Albany (and former Buffalo bishop) Edward Scharfenberger issued a letter to the faithful announcing that the diocese, “in the heart of a secularized region,” had a financial and maintenance crisis—not bankruptcy per se, but “too many buildings!” The diocese would be closing or realigning up to one-third of their 126 buildings, “even some of our remaining parish schools.”
Barbour said her own home parish closed when she was a child. “It was a community,” she said. “When you change that culture, when you change that community—it was never the same.” After the merger with another parish, she said she received her first communion, but “that was pretty much as far as me and my sisters went. My parents were just very turned off.” After her experience growing up, she was hesitant to enroll her own child at a Catholic school, but fell in love with the community at All Saints. Now, she is switching to public school. “I cannot bring myself to put them into another school that could potentially close,” she said.
Parishes reportedly lose between 20% and 60% of Catholics after a merger. Geography, as much as disillusionment, can play a role. Ellen Missert, 58, is a procurator for the canon law appeal process to save her church, St. Aloysius Gonzaga (a procurator has power of attorney to represent her fellow congregation members). The Catholics lobbying to save St. Al contend that closing the parish would create a “church desert” where the nearest Catholic church for some could be up to six miles away. Missert told me about a woman she knows who is nearing 90; the woman began walking to St. Aloysius Gonzaga after the two Catholic churches near her closed. Parishioners organized to help transport the woman to and from Mass once they learned. “If you close St. Al’s, she literally will have nowhere. And can she get a ride somewhere? Sure. That’s not the point,” Missert said. “I mean, she’s showing me more faith and love for the Eucharist and being part of the Mass than what I’m seeing coming from the diocese as far as the importance, because she’s willing to walk no matter what weather to Mass every single morning.”
It is faith in God—not in the Church hierarchy—that keeps the people involved in Save Our Buffalo Churches coming back. “The Holy Spirit has always been a touchstone of strength for me throughout my entire life, not just through this,” said Buffalo diocese parishioner Craig Speers. “I have a deep faith in the Holy Spirit. I let the Holy Spirit guide me.”
Bill Brach, 67, remembers widespread respect for the clergy when he was growing up in the Catholic Church. “He hasn’t lost his faith,” said his wife Nancy, “But he’s lost his faith in the Church.”
“The leadership of the Church,” Brach clarified.
“It’s bizarre,” said Speers. “[The leadership] are fighting against the people. They’re not lapsed Catholics; they are faithful, they’re making donations, they’re volunteers in their parishes.”
The Vatican’s review of their appeal could take a while, but Pruski is optimistic, referring to their decision to review the appeal as “a shot in the arm.” “We’ve been hopeful all along, but now,” she said, “Wow. Somebody out there does understand our panic, and our anger, and our plea to hear our side of the story.”
This story is part of a series Tablet is publishing to promote religious literacy across different religious communities, supported by a grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.
Maggie Phillips is a freelance writer and former Tablet Journalism Fellow.
Religious Literacy in America
Tablet talks about Judaism a lot, but sometimes we like to change the subject. Maggie Phillips covers religious communities across the U.S.—from Christians to Muslims, Hindus to Baha’i, Jehovah’s Witnesses to pagans—to find out what they’re talking about.
See all in Religious Literacy in America →︎