From The Economist of 10 Feb 2011 entitled “Chapter 11, verse 8
Facing mounting lawsuits, Catholic dioceses turn to bankruptcy”
Quote:
Milwaukee has a particularly tortured history. It has been rife with scandal—a Father Lawrence Murphy was alleged to have abused some 200 deaf students, for example, and a convicted priest was sent to work with children in California. Yet civil suits have only recently proved successful. Plaintiffs in other states have charged the church with negligent supervision of priests, but this argument found little traction in Wisconsin’s courts. Victims made progress, at last, in 2007. The archdiocese, plaintiffs claimed, had committed fraud in the 1970s and 1980s by misrepresenting such priests to future victims. The state Supreme Court let that claim stand.
A wave of lawsuits followed and, on January 4th, the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy. The filing puts all the suits on hold. Jeff Anderson, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, argues that the bankruptcy was timed to avoid an embarrassing trial. “It is part of a pattern,” says Mr Anderson, who has brought hundreds of suits against various bits of the church, including one against the Vatican. The archdiocese says this is nonsense. Bankruptcy will simply allow it to deal with creditors equitably and settle claims more quickly than in a trial.
But the bankruptcy will hardly be speedy. All bankruptcies are complex, but those for a church are much more so, explains Jonathan Lipson, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Financial statements filed in the bankruptcy court on February 7th presage fights to come. The archdiocese presented $40.7m in assets, compared with $98.4m in its financial report last year. The discrepancy, the archdiocese says, is because certain assets are held in restricted trusts,
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Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, the state of Pennsylvania had passed a law that says charges cannot be filed two years after a priest raped a kid. The report bluntly says a 10 year old victim cannot file charges after the age of 12.
Remember who has power and who is the victim here. Pedophillia is safe when the Pope and his Cardinals can manipulate the laws. The Pope ordered all Catholic American law makers to change American laws to conform with Church doctrine.
Why is it so hard to even get excommunicated?