CRI [Boston MA]
April 20, 2006
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/706/2006/04/20/272@79410.htm
(Cardinal Sean O'Malley (L) sits with his committee of outside financial experts during a news conference held to disclose the financial audits of the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston for the fiscal years 2004 and 2005 in Brighton, Massachusetts April 19, 2006. Photo:Reuters)
The Roman Catholic Church's sex-abuse scandal has cost the Boston Archdiocese at least $151 million since it erupted in 2002, the Church said on Wednesday in a financial report.
Struggling to restore public confidence after it was exposed for moving abusive priests to new parishes instead of reporting them to authorities, the archdiocese had to close move than 60 churches to raise money and was pressured to reveal its finances.
Church leaders called the latest report the most comprehensive public financial account in the history of the Boston church and said a growing budget deficit had put its programs and ministries at risk.
The archdiocese lost $8.3 million in its fiscal year to end-June 2005 as spending rose and donations shrank. That compared with a year-earlier loss of $2.5 million.
Cardinal Sean O'Malley said he would cut costs to try to reverse that trend and hopes to balance the budget by 2008.
"We're poised to stop the bleeding," he told a news conference, nearly a month after he was elevated from archbishop.
In a letter to parishioners, he said the drop in donations reflected anger over the sexual abuse scandal. "These numbers are one response of a wounded community, an expression of deep hurt," he said.
The abuse scandal, which surfaced in Boston before spreading nationwide, set off a decline in donations at churches across the United States.
The Boston Archdiocese has spent $127 million compensating victims and another $24 million on counseling and prevention efforts.
O'Malley's plan calls for streamlining the bureaucracy that runs the archdiocese and eliminating some positions.
But the church closures and school shutdowns have triggered protests by parishioners, creating a public relations mess just as the archdiocese is trying to stem the fall in donations.
The church raised some $18.7 million in fiscal 2005, down from $19.2 million the prior year, according to the audited financial statements.
O'Malley was put in charge of the Boston archdiocese after it became known that his predecessor, Cardinal Bernard Law, was among several Church leaders who left known pedophiles in active ministry.
Law resigned in December 2002 after dozens of his own priests publicly called on him to step down.
To date the Church has settled claims with more than 650 victims, but at least 200 more are working their way through legal channels, according to Mitchell Garabedian, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs.
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