This chapter allows the debtor to propose a plan of reorganisation to keep its business alive and pay creditors over time.

Multitudes of sexual abuse claims against clergy have driven the Church to take this step.

The US territory's Archbishop Michael Byrnes decided to file for bankruptcy because it is the most expedient way to support the alleged victims.

"Over the last two years, we've done our best. We've strengthened our policies for a safe environment. We've educated over 2,000 people in the practices of safe environment protection of minors. We've made a lot of great strides.

"But our biggest issue is the almost 200 victim survivors of sexual abuse," he said.

"This path will bring the greatest measure of justice to the greatest number of victims. That's the heart of what we're doing."

Byrnes said the bankruptcy will provide "finality for victim survivors that they've been heard and understood."

His predecessor, Anthony Apuron, was suspended following accusations of abusing minors and helping hide similar abuses by priests and other Catholic authority figures in Guam. The allegations date back decades.

The allegations have resulted in the Church in Guam becoming buried under "a mound of lawsuits."

Keith Talbot, a lawyer for the Church, said the decision to file bankruptcy grew out of information from mediation sessions that began in September.

"Bankruptcy does two really good things for us.

"One is finality for the archdiocese going forward," Talbot said.

As part of the process, a judge will set a deadline — effectively a kind of statute of limitations — for claimants to come forward with any new lawsuits.

"The other part is that bankruptcy is the method to deliver the greatest measure of justice to the greatest number of victims."

Leander James, a lawyer representing several alleged victims agrees with Talbot.

"I think this bankruptcy was necessary to create an avenue toward a final settlement," James said.

"It will also provide the archdiocese with a road out of this dark jungle it's been in. For years now, they've been trying to find their way out. I think this may provide that path."

The Guam diocese is not alone in filing for Section 11 bankruptcy.

So far at least 19 dioceses and religious orders have been reported to have filed — or announced their intention to file — for bankruptcy protection in the US in efforts to settle sexual abuse claims, according to Catholic watchdog BishopAccountability.org.

To date, claims of clergy sex abuse have cost the Church more than $3 billion in major settlements and awards doled out to alleged victims.

Source

• National Public Radio
• AP
• Image: NBC News

After 32 minutes, it arrives at its final destination, Termini, the city's central station.

An ad in a pedestrian tunnel at the station reads, "Roma Termini — a Place to Live."

Some have taken the message quite literally.

It's 11:10 p.m. Stranded people from around the world are wrapped up in their sleeping bags as they lay in front of the exit on the north side of the station.

On some nights, up to a hundred homeless huddle together like freezing people in front of a fire. Many of those who sleep here are African refugees.

During the daytime, Roma from Romania represent the majority in and around the station. Left largely unchecked by the local authorities, they aggresively try to squeeze money out of foreign tourists.

A comment by one British tourist recently got posted on the Facebook page of Ignazio Marino, who became the city's mayor in June.

The tourist said she had never before experienced "a more wretched hive of scum and villainy" than when she arrived in Rome by train. For safety reasons, she wrote, it is advisable to "spend as little time as possible" at Termini.

Marino takes criticism seriously, but also in a sporting manner. Continue reading.

Source: Spiegel

Image: hotel.rome.it

Cardinal Dolan, now the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, was formerly archbishop of Milwaukee.

Cardinal Dolan's successor in Milwaukee, Archbishop Jerome Listecki, said the documents describe "some terrible things", with graphic descriptions that require spiritual preparation to read.

One repeatedly abusive priest engaged in sexual activity with a young boy, the child's mother and her female friend.

The documents were made public as part of a deal reached in federal bankruptcy court between the archdiocese and victims suing it for fraud.

They show that whereas previous archbishops had covered up evidence of abuse and shuffled accused priests to new parish assignments, then-Archbishop Dolan pressed for prompt and decisive action against priests guilty of abuse.

He urged Vatican officials to respond promptly to requests for laicisation, and insisted that candour was essential to restore the damaged credibility of the Catholic hierarchy.

But lawyers for abuse victims complained that Dolan paid accused priests to accept laicisation and established a new cemetery trust fund to shield money from creditors.

Dolan, who said these were "old and discredited attacks", said priests were paid to discharge the canon law obligation of dioceses to provide financial support for clergy; and the $NZ73 million placed in trust was always earmarked for cemetery care.

A 2011 deposition by former Archbishop Rembert Weakland said bishops in the 1980s dealt with priests who abused minors in much the same way as those who were alcoholics or had money problems.

Bishops viewed paedophilia as an "afflication", Weakland said. "We were probably all of us naive in thinking that it was a question of willpower and a question of self-discipline. I handled cases [in the 1980s] thinking, hoping, praying that it would be the last one I would have to deal with."

Sources:

Catholic News Agency

National Catholic Reporter

Associated Press

Image: CathNews USA