BALTIMORE (MD)
The Baltimore Banner [Baltimore MD]
September 16, 2026
By Rona Kobell
The church is in bankruptcy, and settlement negotiations could conclude this month
The Archdiocese of Baltimore’s ambitious effort to halve the number of Catholic churches in America’s oldest diocese has brought in nearly $10 million. Yet the plaintiffs seeking settlements from the church for decades-ago sexual abuse may never see that money — or millions more from properties soon to hit the market.
That’s because U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Michelle Harner ruled earlier this year that the properties are separate from the archdiocese, and that their sale proceeds are not part of the bankruptcy estate available to pay sexual abuse survivors’ claims.
At stake is whether the archdiocese will have enough money to satisfy the survivors and settle the case that began on Sept. 29, 2023, when archdiocesan leaders filed for bankruptcy. And the clock is ticking — if the parties can’t reach a settlement in bankruptcy court by Sept. 30, the judge could lift bankruptcy protections that have prevented survivors from pursuing claims in state court.
“If there’s not enough money to get a deal done here, let’s let it go,” the judge told the parties on Sept. 8, “and you can all get it done in state court.”
If that happens, some of the more than 900 claims in Maryland that have been held in abeyance will proceed in state court. Survivors’ attorneys then could sue individual parishes, which are currently shielded from lawsuits by the bankruptcy case. And new cases could move to state court: In April, a California jury awarded $16 million to a man who accused a priest of abusing him 50 years ago.
“These cases are going to crush the archdiocese. They’re looking down the barrel at a catastrophe,” said Jonathan Schochor, an attorney who represents several survivors. “Within 24 hours of the deadline passing, if they don’t settle, all 22 law firms involved with these claims are queuing up. We’re ready to go.”
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Adam Parker, auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, told the judge at a Sept. 8 conference that he wants the case settled, but the church can only give so much.
“It feels like we’re being driven to a number that’s beyond what we can pay to continue our ministries,” he said. “A settlement above the limit would be as much of a disaster for us as the case falling apart.”
The latest archdiocese court filing offers to put nearly $79 million into a trust for survivors — in addition to $185 million the archdiocese estimates it will receive from insurance companies and $20 million from the parishes’ own bank accounts.
The archdiocese wants the parishes to pay into the settlement in exchange for resolving all claims against the parishes by survivors who choose to release those claims. Attorneys and survivors assert that this offer is further proof that the parishes and the archdiocese are yoked together. The archdiocese controls each parish board and decided which churches to close and which brokers to hire.
Paul Jan Zdunek, chair of the seven-member creditors committee negotiating a settlement for survivors, said he’s trying to understand why the parishes would freely commit that $20 million if the archdiocese did not control them.
“It’s what everybody wants to know,” he said.
Attorneys representing the survivors say the archdiocese also has access to tens of millions more through several foundations and assets that Archbishop William Lori controls.
Although the archdiocese’s settlement offer is nearly double the amount offered four months ago, survivors say it isn’t enough.
A survivors committee could reach a settlement as early as Sept. 16, when mediation resumes.
The archdiocese declared bankruptcy two days before the Maryland Child Victims Act became law and eliminated time limits for sexual abuse survivors to sue perpetrators and affiliated institutions. The governor signed the law days after a report from the Maryland attorney general’s office detailing abuse of more than 600 children since the 1940s.
Seven out of 30 parishes settled their church sale contracts shortly after the bankruptcy filing. Plaintiffs and members of the public assumed the sales would be part of a settlement.
“We all know the parishes are part of the archdiocese. Determining that they are separate is ridiculous,” said Teresa Lancaster, a survivor who was featured in the 2017 Netflix documentary “The Keepers” about sexual abuse at Archbishop Keough High School in Southwest Baltimore and the unsolved murder of a teacher.
Lancaster has said publicly that a chaplain at her Catholic high school raped her when she was a teenager. She sued the archdiocese, but the court said the statute of limitations had passed. Lancaster then fought to change the law and went to law school in her late 40s so she could help other survivors. She is representing 30 plaintiffs in settlement negotiations.
But the archdiocese has repeatedly asserted that the parishes are separate and that sale proceeds are not the archdiocese’s to share.
“It’s not like there’s an option as to where the money could go,” archdiocese spokesperson Christian Kendzierski said. “That money belongs to the parish.”
Harner wrote that she ruled as she did because the court respects state law and “corporate formalities” that treat the churches as separate entities.
Who controls the parishes?
In 2024, the archdiocese announced it would close dozens of churches as part of an initiative it called “Seek the City to Come” to address the high maintenance costs of aging churches and falling attendance. Ultimately, the archdiocese consolidated 61 parishes into about two dozen and reduced the number of worship and ministry sites to about 30 in Baltimore City and parts of Baltimore County.
The total portfolio value of parishes could exceed tens of millions of dollars, based on a Banner analysis of previous sales and publicly listed asking prices.
Attorneys and sexual abuse survivors say that if the real estate portfolio were part of settlement talks, they might have been able to settle more quickly. In the three years they have been negotiating, 15 known survivors have died.
A bankruptcy judge in Guam, a U.S. territory, ruled last year in a similar case that the archdiocese “is essentially one body,” allowing sales of churches there to compensate survivors.
The Baltimore judge’s decision followed the law, said Marie T. Reilly, an emeritus law professor at Penn State University who has closely followed about 40 U.S. archdiocesan bankruptcy cases.
That its parishes are legally separate, she said, “just doesn’t really have an easy parallel with secular law.” But that doesn’t make the ruling any less valid, she said.
Going after the real estate makes sense because the stalemate is about finding more money, Reilly said. But the law is clear, she said — “parishes are separately incorporated.”
Parallel histories
In 1789, Baltimore Catholics founded the nation’s first diocese. For most of its history, all buildings were part of the archdiocese. In the 1960s, the parishes — or church communities — incorporated as separate entities.
The move may have been precipitated by a 1956 fire at an oyster roast at St. Rose of Lima in Brooklyn that killed 11 people and injured 250. About a decade later, the church’s roof collapsed, injuring multiple children. St. Rose of Lima is now for sale.
About 15 years ago, parish real estate was retitled in the names of individual corporations, according to Kendzierski. The retitling “further reflected that the property belongs to the parishes under canon law and civil law.”
Under this system, each cluster of formerly separate churches is incorporated under the parish entity. When one church is sold, the funds return to the entity. This way, the archdiocese spokesperson said, the assets not only stay within the parish but also support the newly merged parish entity and can fund deferred maintenance projects or education goals.
As the case winds its way through bankruptcy, additional reports of misconduct by Catholic clergy continue to surface in the region. Zdunek, a turnaround executive for large companies, said he is considered a “successful survivor.” Yet he says there are scars people don’t see, and hurts that resurface.
Last month, Kenneth Goedeke, a Catholic deacon, was charged with two counts of soliciting a minor. At the time of his arrest, Goedeke was working at St. Ignatius, Hickory Catholic Church. He had previously taught at the prestigious — and wealthy — Calvert Hall College High School in Towson. The archdiocese has suspended him from ministry and employment pending the investigation’s outcome.
Zdunek, a Calvert Hall alum, was livid about the solicitation allegations.
“We are in the middle of what one would think is an all-hands-on-deck effort to protect children,” he said. “If it’s not going to stop when there is so much light shed on this, when is it going to stop?”
The bankruptcy court established Zdunek’s committee to negotiate for the survivors. The archdiocese’s recent amended filing for a prospective settlement includes a chart outlining different amounts for survivors depending on the number of claims. The chart goes up to 800, which would be the ceiling for permitted claims; survivors insist the number is more than 900.
When the case involving the archdiocese concludes, Schochor said, he will begin negotiating with parishes where abuse occurred — armed with a court ruling that the real estate money belongs solely to them.
“It’s all up to the Archdiocese of Baltimore to make the requisite offer to its survivors, who are now adults, who were abused as kids,” he said. “We’re not out of time, but we’re running out of time.”
Banner reporter Giacomo Bologna contributed to this story.
Rona Kobell is a regional reporter covering Baltimore County. Before joining The Banner, she worked as an environmental reporter in the region for nearly 20 years at The Baltimore Sun and the Chesapeake Bay Journal.