NY Archdiocese Sells HQ For $100M, Lays Off Workers To Pay Sex Abuse Cases
The Archdiocese of New York, under the leadership of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, has announced the first round of a series of layoffs of workers within their organization, a needed restructuring to save money to pay victims of sexual abuse.
Last month, the Archdiocese announced that it had sold its longtime office headquarters for more than $100M. The offices, at the 20-story Terence Cardinal Cooke Building, also housed offices for Catholic Charities of New York and Catholic Near East Welfare Association and are being sold off to be redeveloped as residential units with the Archdiocese downsized to a more practical and humble location.
The building sale was followed by laying off 18 workers, or some 4% of their administrative staff, which they estimate will save them $1.5M a year, with more planned in the next few months.
“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,” said Dolan.
In the same way that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently agreed to pay nearly $1B in a sex abuse settlement, so too is the Archdiocese of NY looking for the monetary means to pay restitution. In a letter previously shared by the Archdiocese of New York, Dolan explained:
We have worked hard to settle meritorious cases not covered by insurance in justice for the victims of years past. We settled over 400 cases through our Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program (IRCP) and 123 more in response to the CVA.
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.
Along with selling off buildings and laying off staff, the Archdiocese is suing their insurance company, Chubb, because “even though we have paid them over $2 billion in premium by today’s standards, is now attempting to evade their legal and moral contractual obligation to settle covered claims which would bring peace and healing to victim-survivor.”
Chubb insists that they are not obligated to settle several of these claims, some of which go back over 80 years, because the church knew about the abuse and didn’t do anything to stop it, making them not responsible.
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