Before dismissing staff however, the Archdiocese sold its First Ave. Manhattan office headquarters building for US $100 million. It will be redeveloped as rental units.

The remaining Archdiocese staff are being relocated to a smaller building at 488 Madison Ave., closer to St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue.

The proceeds "will be used to ease the financial burden caused by the sexual abuse crisis" Dolan said.

Difficult decisions

Dolan said laying off staff was difficult but necessary. 18 people were affected, about four percent of the administration staff for the Archdiocese.

"Such decisions are never easy, but the current financial crunch the Archdiocese faces, and the upcoming move to our new offices in 2025, make this the appropriate time to make some tough decisions" he told the Archdiocese's faithful in a letter.

According to media reports, this will save the Archdiocese over $1.5 million as officials focus more resources on parishes.

"Our goal in all of this is to ensure that we are responding as effectively as possible to the needs of the people we are called upon to serve in the ten counties and nearly 300 parishes that make up this Archdiocese" Dolan said.

"This restructuring has, unfortunately, resulted in regrettable lay-offs for some workers at the ... [office headquarters] ... and elsewhere around the Archdiocese."

Dolan added that further staff reduction is likely, at the very least through attrition.

Covering costs

Dolan said costs surrounding the sex-abuse cases against the Church remain a major financial concern. The Archdiocese has sued its insurer, Chubb, for refusing to pay some of the claims.

"We have worked hard to settle meritorious cases not covered by insurance, in justice to the victims of years past" Dolan wrote in his letter.

"We settled over 400 hundred cases through our Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Programme and 123 more in response to the Child Victims Act of 2019.

"There remains about 1400 cases of alleged abuse, some dating back to World War II.

"To be clear, not all of these allegations are against priests. In fact, the two largest groups of complaints are against a former volunteer basketball coach and a former janitor…..In the long run, all these cases are a towering expense for us" he wrote.

In addition to the proceeds from the Manhattan property sale, Dolan said other properties are being considered for sale as well.

"Our future financial strength will require even more strategy and sacrifice, even more help from the Archdiocese, and more help from our parishes and people" he said.

Some of the savings from the Archdiocese staff redundancies and property sales will go back to parishes in the form of grants - for example, to organise special Masses for immigrant communities that make up the Archdiocese which encompasses Manhattan, Staten Island, The Bronx and northern suburbs, Dolan said.

Source

• NY Post

The once-powerful American Cardinal was expelled from the priesthood for the assault, which allegedly occurred at a wedding reception in Massachusetts.

Pope Francis laicised (defrocked) McCarrick in 2019 after a Vatican investigation determined he sexually abused minors, as well as adults.

Mr McCarrick did not speak during the hearing, at which the court entered a not guilty plea on his behalf, set bail at $5,000, and ordered him to stay away from the victim and have no contact with minors.

Berated by abuse survivors and demonstrators as he approached the courtroom in a walker, they shouted: "Shame on you! Prince of the church!"

McCarrick is the only US Catholic cardinal, current or former, to be criminally charged with child sex crimes.

McCarrick's fall began in 2017 when a former altar boy came forward to report the priest had groped him when he was a teenager.

The following year, the New York Archdiocese announced that Mr McCarrick had been removed from ministry after finding the allegation to be "credible and substantiated". In addition, two New Jersey dioceses revealed they had settled claims of sexual misconduct against him in the past involving adults.

McCarrick was one of the most visible Catholic Church officials in the US. He served as the spokesman for fellow US bishops when they enacted a "zero tolerance" policy against sexually abusive priests in 2002.

A two-year internal investigation looked into McCarrick's conduct. The investigation found that three decades of bishops, cardinals and popes downplayed or dismissed reports of sexual misconduct.

Correspondence showed they repeatedly rejected the information outright as rumour and excused it as an "imprudence."

The investigative findings released last year pinned much of the blame on Pope John Paul II. He appointed McCarrick Archbishop of Washington, DC, despite having commissioned an inquiry that confirmed McCarrick slept with seminarians.

The alleged victim will be represented by lawyer Mitchell Garabedian. Garabedian has spent his career representing child sex abuse victims — including those abused by Catholic prelates.

Garabedian's litigation against Catholic officials was depicted in the 2015 film "Spotlight."

The next court appearance for Mr McCarrick's is set for Oct 28.

Sources

National Catholic Reporter

Religion News Service

BBC

In a column published online in Catholic New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan said 14 per cent of the archdiocese's 368 parishes would undergo a "purgatory" of sorts and be merged with neighbours.

"I wish it could be different. I'd rather be adding parishes, or expanding the ones we have," Cardinal Dolan wrote.

The archdiocese, which covers the Bronx, Manhattan, Staten Island and parts of the Hudson Valley, can no longer fill the seats in all its parishes, he explained.

"In areas that used to have huge Catholic numbers . . . most of the people have since moved away.

"On Manhattan alone, for instance, we have 88 parishes, some only blocks apart. Do the math: We have about 25 per cent of our parishes in an area where less than 12 per cent of the 2.8 million Catholics of the archdiocese reside," he said.

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When a New York Times report drew attention to this situation, the archdiocese insisted it was paying "under protest" and only because it could not control the union's health-care programmes.

The Times report, which focuses on about 3000 employees at the nursing homes and health clinics operated by the archdiocese, said the archdiocese, albeit reluctantly, has been paying for a health care plan that covers contraception and even abortion for these workers.

The archdiocese belongs to the League of Voluntary Hospitals and Homes, a multi-employer organisation that negotiates with the union every few years for a joint labour contract.

The Times quoted Bruce McIver, the president of the league since 1991, as saying he recalled that some Catholic organisations had expressed concern about paying for the contraception benefits in the mid- to late 1990s.

But in recent years, as the number of Catholic hospitals in the city dwindled, "they just kind of stopped, from my perspective, paying attention to this issue," he said.

"Eventually, the Catholics just said, you know, we are going to ignore the issue and pay into the fund and people are going to make their own choices about contraception and so forth."

Archdiocesan spokesman Joseph Zwilling said that Cardinal John J. O'Connor and the archdiocese objected to these services being included in the health insurance plan when joining the league in the 1990s.

But the cardinal then decided "there was no other option if the Catholic Church was to continue to provide health care to these union-affiliated employees in the city of New York," Zwilling said.

In opposing mandatory contraceptive coverage in the "Obamacare" federal health plan, Cardinal Dolan has repeatedly said that it would be a gross violation of religious freedom to compel Catholic institutions to pay into plans that provide contraceptive coverage.

Sources:

New York Times

Archdiocese of New York

Image: CatholicPhilly

In an attempt to block the archdiocese, the administration is arguing that the request for documents from President Barack Obama and his senior advisers would be "exceptionally burdensome" to fulfil and inappropriate except in extraordinary circumstances.

The government is requiring employers to include coverage of contraceptives, abortion drugs and sterilisation procedures in staff health insurance plans.

Although there are some exceptions for religious employers, the New York archdiocese says it would incur nearly $NZ237 million each year in penalties for refusing to comply.

In December, a US District Court judge ruled that the lawsuit filed by the archdiocese and two other Catholic entities can move forward, despite the administration's argument that it was premature.

But in January, a US District Court judge in Washington threw out a related challenge to the birth-control mandate filed by the Archdiocese of Washington and four other Catholic non-profit groups, ruling it was too early to hear the lawsuit.

At least 43 Catholic organisations, including the University of Notre Dame and the Catholic University of America, filed lawsuits in 2012 in courts across the country, arguing that the mandate violates the freedom of religion guaranteed in the US Constitution's First Amendment.

Sixteen companies whose owners have moral objections to the mandate have been granted a temporary injunction while their lawsuits are pending, according to the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing many of those who have sued over the mandate.

Sources:

Newsmax

Bloomberg

Image: The Guardian