{"id":4244,"date":"2006-12-04T10:15:02","date_gmt":"2006-12-04T10:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/la-life-and-times.html"},"modified":"2006-12-04T10:15:02","modified_gmt":"2006-12-04T10:15:02","slug":"la-life-and-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/la-life-and-times.html","title":{"rendered":"LA life and Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

As many of you know, last Friday a sex abuse settlement was announced related to cases pending in against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. <\/a> 45 accusers will be awarded a 60 million dollar settlement. <\/p>\n

From Friday’s paper:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Cardinal Roger M. Mahony said Friday that the Los Angeles Archdiocese had agreed to pay $60 million to 45 people who said they were abused by Roman Catholic priests \u2014 a payout that would be among the highest per person since the clergy sex abuse scandal exploded four years ago.<\/p>\n

But within hours, plaintiffs’ attorneys said Mahony had "jumped the gun" in announcing a settlement. Raymond P. Boucher, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, confirmed that they were "on the verge of settling" but said "there are still some issues to be ironed out."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This article<\/a> looks at what the financial consequences might be:<\/p>\n

\n
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Hit with an initial $40-million bill for its share of 45 clergy sexual abuse settlements announced Friday, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles warned that it will have to make cutbacks. And the 485 remaining molestation lawsuits could cost hundreds of millions more.<\/p>\n

The payouts will certainly hurt, but the archdiocese has vast wealth, most of it in land. A Times analysis has found that the archdiocese is the recorded owner of one of the biggest real estate portfolios in Southern California \u2014 at least 1,600 properties with an estimated value of about $4 billion.<\/p>\n

What the nation’s most-populous Catholic jurisdiction might be willing to sell, however, is likely to feed an ongoing debate within the church over who controls parish property \u2014 the prelates governing the institution or the parishioners.<\/p>\n

Most of the archdiocese’s property is devoted to religious purposes, such as churches and schools. But there are also oil wells, farm parcels, commercial parking lots, a fashion district building and the land under an Alhambra car dealership.<\/p>\n

snip<\/em><\/p>\n

A Times examination of property records and other documents suggests that about $175 million of the archdiocese’s real estate portfolio is in properties not classified by the tax assessor as used for religious purposes or cemeteries \u2014 and thus more likely to be available for settlements.<\/p>\n

In addition, the archdiocese has investment funds of about $660 million, although it says most of that money belongs to affiliated organizations and parishes, according to the church’s newspaper, the Tidings.<\/p>\n

Mahony said the archdiocese set aside $40 million last year toward Friday’s settlements. He has not said how the church would pay for its share of settlements in the remaining lawsuits.<\/p>\n

"Our goal is to have no impact to our parishes or ministries that would imperil our ministry," the cardinal said. "There are ways to combine services, maybe to accomplish the goals with fewer personnel, down the road."<\/p>\n

But many parishioners fear that the settlements will cut into the archdiocese’s network of churches, schools and ministries, which serve 4.3 million people in Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.<\/p>\n

The archdiocese’s contention that its insurers are obligated to pay for the rest of the claims has been disputed by liability companies, which contend that California law renders coverage void because church superiors had reason to expect that the abuse would occur. The two sides have also differed on the dollar and time limits of the coverage.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This article examines still-unanswered questions and the question of opening files.<\/a><\/p>\n

Diogenes at CWN reminds us of the breakdown in the LA cases: those accusations of activity and cover-up that took place after 1985 (the beginning of Cardinal Mahony’s tenure) will be settled, and those before (and after 1954) are the only cases subject to trial.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As many of you know, last Friday a sex abuse settlement was announced related to cases pending in against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. 45 accusers will be awarded a 60 million dollar settlement. From Friday’s paper: Cardinal Roger M. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}