Diocese Agrees to Sell Six Churches
Settles Insurance Claim for $8.5m

By Michael Paulson and Ralph Ranalli
Boston Globe
May 21, 2005

[See also Diocese, insurance company to settle, by Michael Paulson, Boston Globe, March 8, 2005.]

The financially strapped Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has reached an $8.5 million settlement with the second of two insurance carriers and has reached agreements to sell property associated with six closing parishes for at least $10 million.

The insurance settlement and the property sales will help the archdiocese bring some order to its financial situation, which has been severely harmed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The archdiocese has closed 62 parishes since last summer, has cut 19 percent of its administrative staff since 2002, and is now contemplating reducing pension benefits for priests.

Archdiocesan officials declined to disclose the sale prices for the six properties yesterday, but according to property purchasers and public records, church officials agreed to sell the largest -- Blessed Sacrament church, school, rectory, and convent campus in Cambridge -- to a developer for at least $5.6 million. An official from a Jamaica Plain Pentecostal church said that the congregation had reached a $2.8 million purchase and sale agreement for the former St. Joseph Church, rectory, and hall in Hyde Park.

In Quincy, a group of private developers confirmed that they had reached an agreement with the archdiocese to buy the former Most Blessed Sacrament Parish rectory in Hough's Neck for $815,000. In Medford, Tufts University spent $1.1 million for the former Sacred Heart Church and its rectory, according to a record of the purchase filed with the county registry of deeds. Sale prices of the other two properties, in Lowell and Malden, were unavailable yesterday.

The archdiocese said the proceeds of the sales will be used to help finance archdiocesan operations and support remaining parishes, but will not be used to finance settlements with abuse victims.

The archdiocese is paying for the portion of the abuse settlements that is not covered by insurance with money from last year's $99 million sale to Boston College of a 43-acre portion of the archdiocesan headquarters in Brighton.

The insurance settlement, with St. Paul Travelers, brings to $50.8 million the amount paid by insurance companies to cover a portion of the financial cost to the archdiocese of sexual abuse by priests.

The archdiocese has paid $120.6 million since 1950 to settle lawsuits brought by men and women who said they were sexually abused by priests. Prior to this year, insurance companies had paid $22.3 million toward those settlements, and in March the archdiocese settled a lawsuit against Lumbermens Mutual Casualty Co. for $20 million.

The archdiocese was able to reach a settlement with Travelers, which insured the archdiocese during the 1980s, without a lawsuit. Travelers spokeswoman Laura Bradshaw confirmed the settlement amount and said, "We are pleased the matter has drawn to a conclusion."

Although the archdiocese settled 541 claims in late 2003, it faces an estimated 170 more claims filed since that time, according to church officials.

"With these matters resolved, the archdiocese hopes that it will soon be in a position to begin discussions with plaintiffs' counsel about how to resolve pending cases," the Rev. John Connolly, a special assistant to Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley, said in a statement released by the archdiocese.

An attorney for abuse victims, Mitchell Garabedian, called the insurance settlement "a step in the right direction" because it will allow settlement talks to begin in earnest. Garabedian said he represents about 55 people with claims against the archdiocese.

In the neighborhoods where the former parishes were sold, former parishioners had mixed reactions. Many said they were sad to see their churches go, but some said they were heartened by the fact that two of the buildings would remain houses of worship.

In Medford, former Sacred Heart parishioner Jack Coakley said he wasn't surprised by the university's purchase of the 51 Winthrop St. property.

"Tufts has bought up everything else in the area," he said of the Medford Hillside neighborhood.

Tufts University spokeswoman Kim Thurler confirmed that the university purchased the 6,000-square-foot church and the 3,000-square-foot rectory on Monday, but said that "nothing has been decided" about how it will be used.

In neighboring Malden, the fate of the former St. Peter Parish -- a little white church with wood paneling, simple carpets, and pews donated by parishioners -- was closely watched in the tight-knit, mostly Italian neighborhood. Lucy Lally, 67, who has lived next door for 45 years, said she is pleased the building will remain a house of God. But as a lifelong St. Peter parishioner, Lally added, it will be hard to watch another denomination worship there.

St. Peter was purchased by the Grace Church of God, a Pentecostal congregation comprised of mostly Haitian immigrants that currently meets at the Martin Luther King school in Cambridge. The pastor, the Rev. Norgues Maleus, could not be reached for comment.

Another Pentecostal congregation, the Greater Faith Worship Center of Jamaica Plain, paid $2.8 million for the former St. Joseph Church, rectory, and hall in Hyde Park, according to a church official who asked not to be named.

In Lowell, the archdiocese signed a purchase and sale agreement with Carlisle Equity Partners for the former Notre Dame de Lourdes Church and parking lot in the city's Lower Highlands neighborhood. The developers could not be reached for comment yesterday, but Mayor Armand Mercier of Lowell said Carlisle Equity Partners plans to demolish the church and build condominiums on the site and on the parking lot across the street. Mercier said the development plans still need approval from the city's planning board.

In Cambridge, the largest of the church properties, the 82,500-square-foot Blessed Sacrament campus, was sold to a developer and state Republican operative, Paul Ognibene. A spokesman for Ognibene said he has agreed to pay a minimum of $5.6 million for the property, but that amount would increase on a sliding scale if he tries to put more than 21 units on the roughly 1-acre property. Ognibene plans a mixed development of rental units and condominiums, the spokesman said, with 15 percent of the condos set aside as affordable housing.