St. Mary’s pays abuse victims $1.27- million

By Cathy DeDe, Chronicle Managing Editor

St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Glens Falls will pay $1.27 million as its share of the Albany Diocese’s $148 million settlement with survivors of sexual abuse by Diocese clergy members.

St. Mary’s Pastor Father Scott VanDerveer informed parishion-ers of the payment in a letter.

“Of the 440 cases of sexual abuse in our Diocese that were surfaced during the two-year lookback window of the Child Victims Act, 11 of these occurred at either St. Mary’s or St. Alphonsus Parishes from the 1950s through the 1990s,” Fr. Scott wrote.

“This tragic fact is a horror and an embarrassment, to say the least.”

Fr. Scott had two messages regarding the settlement: “It hurts, but we’re not concerned about it jeopardizing our future,” and also, “the settlement should hurt us.”

Fr. Scott tells The Chronicle the $1.27 million settlement amount “depletes our reserves,” but “we were left enough to cover payrolls for several months.”

“It hurts deeply,” he said. “However, we haven’t used our reserves in my almost five years here. We are able to live off of our income.

“It’s not going to change our operations. We didn’t have to consider any layoffs or operational changes. We just have to be very careful, but the trends look good.

“Our Mass attendance is growing and our weekly income is growing. We’re actually making progress every week ahead of pace.”

He says, “Every church was given a little cushion as part of the negotiation. All of us felt the pain, but some are going to have to put together a plan.

“If their income is in a downward trend in the future, they won’t be in immediate trouble, but it takes away the confidence that they could weather a storm.”

Fr. Scott says, “What’s so important is we want this to hurt on some levels, so that there can be a meaningful demonstration of our contrition.”

In his letter, signed “with sorrow and hope,” he wrote, “This moment is both sobering and profoundly significant…not only the conclusion of a long legal process, but also another step in the Church’s ongoing confrontation with a painful and shameful chapter of her history.

“First and foremost I want to express, on behalf of our parish community, my deep sorrow for the suffering endured by survivors. The abuse they experienced — and the failures that allowed it to happen — represent a grave betrayal of trust and a distortion of everything the Church is meant to be.”

“Those are my words,” Fr. Scott said of the message in his letter.

But, he said, “That’s the message that I think is united across the Diocese: This $148 million settlement is meant to show just contrition, with no nuance, no clauses of qualification, just real sorrow and a desire to let the survivors know, we know it doesn’t solve the problem. It’s not a remedy. It’s more a gesture of contrition.”

He quoted also a letter from Albany Diocese Bishop Mark O’Connell, which used the same language.

St. Michael’s pays $75,000; Annunciation won’t disclose

Chronicle Managing Editor Cathy DeDe writes: Besides St. Mary’s in Glens Falls, approximately 15 Roman Catholic churches are located within the Chronicle readership area.

Among those is St. Michael’s in South Glens Falls. Its church bulletin said St. Michael’s will pay $75,000 towards the settlement.

This amount was gifted by members of the Parish to cover the cost, Father Tony Childs said in the church bulletin.

Rather than “what initially seemed to be a crushing and painful depletion of financial resources,” Fr. Childs called it, “Nothing short of a miraculous reprieve.”

Pastor Joseph Busch of Our Lady of the Annunciation Church in Queensbury declined to disclose their settlement amount — nor those of St. Cecilia’s in Warrensburg and Sacred Heart in Lake George, where he also serves.

“The Diocese does not want us comparing church to church,” Fr. Busch said. “The Bishop really wants the churches to survive, rather than cripple them with the bankruptcy assessment, so they were weighing all things to come up with the assessments.”

He said he will communicate with parishioners in private letters.

“We have savings,” Fr. Busch says. “We’ll be fine.”

He said, “The diocese has done a really good job on the safety and protection of children in the last 25 years.”

The 126 individual parishes in the Albany Diocese will together pay $50 million of the Diocese’s $148 million settlement to approximately 440 survivors of clergy sexual abuse.

The rest will be covered by the Diocese or its insurers.

The settlement was reached as part of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy case.

Diocese Communications Director Karen Barrans said in response to a Chronicle query about how much each church is paying, “We are not releasing a list of the individual amounts.”

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