Economy, scandals plague archdioceses
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Javier Stauring, a Roman Catholic chaplain at a Los Angeles juvenile detention center, has yet to enter the archdiocese’s towering new $189 million cathedral. He says he is uncomfortable worshipping at Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral – with its fancy gift shop and imported alabaster windows – given the layoffs and other cutbacks caused by a $4.3 million budget deficit at the headquarters of the nation’s largest archdiocese.
The deficit will cost 60 people their jobs this month and curtail programs that offer anti-abortion counseling and serve college students, gays, minorities, inmates and the disabled.
“There are some bad feelings about how the church has chosen to allocate funds,” said Stauring, who will lose half of his 24 staff members to the layoffs. “It would have been nice if we had heard that “We really did try to save these services.’ But I never heard that. It just shows where the priority is.”
Elsewhere around the country, the archdioceses of Boston, Chicago and Milwaukee have announced budget cuts. Among the reasons given: the downturn on Wall Street, higher operating costs, a drop-off in contributions because of the priest sex scandal, and the prospect of multimillion-dollar settlements with victims.
“I think what we can tell for sure is that the sex abuse scandal will cost the American Catholic Church literally billions of dollars before it is settled,” said Jim Post, head of Voice of the Faithful, an organization of lay Catholics formed in response to the sex scandal in Boston. “That’s money that could be used for many other purposes.”
In Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony has insisted the cutbacks were not caused by spending on the new cathedral, which opened Sept. 2. The money was raised from donations during the boom years of the 1990s, he said.
Archdiocese spokesman Tod Tamberg said stock market losses and higher operating expenses – not the sexual abuse crisis – are to blame for the cutbacks in Los Angeles. But he noted that the church must be prepared for settlements with victims.
“It is not possible to determine future liability with regard to suits that have yet to be filed, but certainly such contingencies must be examined and planned for,” Tamberg said.
The Boston Archdiocese, at the very center of the scandal, had to cut this year’s budget by 40 percent. Faced with more than 400 claims of priest sex abuse, the archdiocese has said it is contemplating filing for bankruptcy as a last resort. That would allow the church to continue operating.
In September, the archdiocese reached a $10 million settlement with 86 alleged victims of child-molesting priest John Geoghan. The church has already paid an estimated $15 million to 40 alleged Geoghan victims.
Donations to the Milwaukee Archdiocese are down by $800,000 so far this year, spokesman Jerry Topczewski said. And the Chicago Archdiocese posted a $38 million deficit in its operating fund for fiscal year 2001.
On the campus of California State University at Long Beach, students belonging to the Catholic campus ministry have adopted a fighting stance to overcome budget cuts by the Los Angeles Archdiocese.
Hoping to raise the $45,000 needed to retain their minister and cover program costs, students have started tossing spare change into a jug and are organizing outings to television show tapings that pay for audiences.
Others have opted for self-sacrifice.
“When they were telling me that I needed to eliminate spots, I eliminated myself,” said Sister Suzanne Jabro, who is Stauring’s boss. “I just couldn’t lose one more Catholic chaplain.”
Word of the cuts surfaced as criminal repercussions from the sex scandal hit Southern California. Last week, four former priests were arrested. More than a dozen current or former priests are under investigation.
The Los Angeles Archdiocese has so far paid out $3.6 million in settlements.
Tamberg acknowledged the cutbacks will have a human cost.
“There is a lot of anger. There is a lot of sadness,” he said. “There is no good way to say this. It is painful.”