Archdiocese plan for reorganization coming to close.

Byline: Bill Bishop The Register-Guard

PORTLAND - Bankruptcy reorganization may be finalized on Monday for the Archdiocese of Portland, a federal bankruptcy judge indicated Tuesday after a 3 1/2 -hour hearing on the plan.

If approved, the plan will allow the church to pay 175 victims of sexual abuse by priests, while continuing to operate normally and without having to sell schools or properties of its 124 parishes.

Court records indicate that the church will end up paying $104 million to people who were sexually abused by priests of the archdiocese since 1984. Of that amount, $77 million will be paid under the reorganization plan to settle 175 claims that have been on hold since 2004, when the archdiocese became the first in the nation to declare bankruptcy on the eve of trials in multimillion dollar lawsuits over clergy sexual abuse.

While the reorganization plan winds to a close, representatives of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said after Tuesday's hearing that parishioners should insist the archdiocese reveal all it knows about abusive priests and the response of church leaders to abuse allegations over the years.

"Church officials are still hiding information. Why would anybody believe churches are safe places for children," Bill Crane, SNAP's Oregon director, said Tuesday. "It's a matter of public safety as well. Why isn't the church exposing people who knowingly have an appetite for sexually abusing children?"

He said hearing is set for July in which several claimants are asking the court to make public the confidential documents they obtained through the legal process showing the church's response to clergy abuse allegations. Church officials oppose the request, according to court records.

Until the plan is finalized, all parties remain under a judicial gag order preventing them from publicly discussing the plan or the mediation process that settled all but three comparatively minor claims against the archdiocese.

In testimony Tuesday, Portland lawyer Kelly Clark said the mediation work of U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan and Lane County Circuit Judge Lyle Velure was "unlike anything I had ever seen or been through before."

The judges summoned numerous claimants, their lawyers and representatives of the church and its insurance companies for separate, simultaneous and lengthy settlement conferences, he said. The judges were "insistent, persistent, tireless and effective," he said.

Under questioning by the church's lawyer, Clark said, "The process was not always very kind or easy on my clients. I expect it was not for your clients as well."

Clark, who represented 55 individual claimants, testified that several are so emotionally damaged by the sexual abuse they suffered and by the settlement process that "quite literally, they would not be able to handle it" if the reorganization is not approved and they have to go through another legal fight.

He testified that several claimants sought letters of apology and other nonmonetary concessions from the church.

"One of my clients simply asked to pray with the archbishop," Clark testified. "The archbishop graciously agreed to do that."

The remaining three unsettled claims concern a wrongful expulsion lawsuit filed by parents of a child who was kicked out of a Catholic school. The claim involves no allegation of sexual misconduct. Church lawyers argued in court that the open claim should not stop the reorganization because a church fund of at least $3.8 million is enough to cover the estimated value of the claim 38 times over.