Accountability

Mission Management: The Spokane, Wash., diocese recently announced that a new settlement had been reached with respect to current, pending claims of sexual abuse. The settlement culminates almost a decade of complex litigation and a 2004 bankruptcy filing that cost the diocese $48 million.

• On Dec. 6, 2004, the Diocese of Spokane filed for bankruptcy and submitted a Plan of Reorganization, which provided a fund of $48 million to compensate victims of sexual abuse.?


• The Bankruptcy Court set March 10, 2006, as the deadline or “Bar Date” for filing of future claims for persons who have claims of sexual abuse occurring before Dec. 6, 2004.
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• Under certain conditions, a person who did not meet the March 10, 2006, Bar Date may still make a claim of sexual abuse as a “Future Tort Claimant.” The Plan defines such a claimant as a person who was not aware that he or she was abused or harmed prior to the Bar Date. Future claims can be made until 2016.?


• A future claims fund was created by setting aside $1million of the total $48 million bankruptcy settlement. In the event that future claims and the awards exceeded $1 million, the diocese was required to recapitalize the future claims fund so that it did not dip below $200,000.?

VATICAN CITY -- The majority of bishops' conferences in the Americas, Europe and Asia have complied with a Vatican mandate to draw up anti-abuse guidelines, said the Vatican's top investigator of clerical sex abuse.

Without counting Africa, "more than half of the conferences responded" by the May deadline, Msgr. Charles Scicluna of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said in an interview with the Italian monthly Catholic magazine Jesus.

All those who did not send in their proposed guidelines would be getting "a letter of reminder," he added.

The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, quoted from the interview Tuesday and said the congregation received an encouraging number of responses from Anglo-Saxon countries, "but also Europe, Asia and Latin America have high percentages of responses."

While the result is gratifying, Scicluna said in the interview, Africa "has a particular situation with great difficulty in church structures," presumably referring to the lack of needed communications and other infrastructure that help a nation's bishops draw up national policies.