SYRACUSE (NY)
Syracuse.com [Syracuse NY]
February 25, 2026
By Vince Gasparini
A federal judge has approved the final order that allows the Catholic Diocese of Syracuse to emerge from bankruptcy.
That will start the process of distributing $176 million to hundreds of people who were sexually abused by clergy and other church staff.
Wendy Kinsella, chief U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge for the Northern District of New York, signed off on the agreement to close the case on Wednesday.
An independent arbiter will award $176.1 million to the sexual abuse survivors. The money that makes up that compensation fund comes from:
- $76.1 million provided by the Diocese’s insurance carriers
- $100 million contributed from the “Catholic family,” including $45 million from parishes, $5 million from other diocesan entities and $50 million from the Diocese itself via investments and loans
Bishop Douglas J. Lucia issued a letter to the church community on Wednesday.
“Beyond doubt, my heart continues to break for the damage that abuse has inflicted on the Church and its members,” he said. “To the survivors and their families, I express genuine sorrowfulness and a firm resolve to ensure that future generations do not experience this scourge.”
Kinsella had approved the diocese’s plan to exit bankruptcy in August. The diocese originally filed for bankruptcy in June 2020 as it faced a growing number of sex abuse lawsuits. In all, 411 claims have been filed.
The compensation fund is the centerpiece of the bankruptcy exit plan. Abuse survivors have voted several times overwhelmingly in favor of the plan.
A Minneapolis lawyer translated years of pain suffered by hundreds of abuse survivors into a dollar figure drawn from the $176.1 million fund.
The lawyer, Roger Kramer, reviewed each claim and assigned it a point value. A survivor’s percentage of the total points equals their percentage of the fund.
Kramer generally used three factors to evaluate a claim: the nature and circumstances of the abuse, its impact on the survivor and the involvement of the person filing the claim.
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 and avoid lawsuits. Thousands of priests nationwide have been credibly accused of abuse, a scandal that has rocked the church for decades.
Stephen Breen, the diocese’s chief financial officer, testified earlier this year that the plan would create “financial hardships.” He said 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.
Lucia said the diocese would not need to close or merge parishes to pay back the millions in loans. He added that the diocese wouldn’t have agreed to the loans if it couldn’t repay them.
Headquartered in Syracuse, the diocese covers seven counties across 116 parishes, 10 missions and seven oratories. It employs about 3,000 people.