c. 2003 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) One year ago, the nation’s Catholic bishops convened in Dallas and pledged greater “transparency and openness” in response to revelations about clergy sexual abuse.

That included financial transparency _ being open especially about the money spent in connection with the abuse scandal, according to church leaders.

As the bishops prepare to gather again in St. Louis June 19-21, a small but growing number of dioceses are revealing the cost of the scandal in dollars and cents.

“I think the trend lines are toward disclosure,” said Francis J. Butler, president of Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities, or FADICA.

The Washington-based consortium has pushed the bishops to disclose all costs related to the sexual abuse crisis, including legal settlements, counseling for victims and treatment for clergy offenders.

So far, at least a dozen _ and maybe 20 or more _ dioceses have reported how much they spent and how much of that came from insurance as opposed to other sources, such as the collection basket, according to Butler’s count. The archdioceses of Baltimore and Chicago were among the first and largest to divulge these costs.

However, there are 195 U.S. Catholic dioceses, which means most of them have not opened the books. “We still have a control syndrome at work here,” said Butler, giving his view of why relatively few bishops have showed parishioners the money.

The Archdiocese of Boston, the epicenter of the national abuse scandal, recently posted details of its entire operating budget on its Web site as one way of regaining the trust of the faithful.

“People have to have confidence that we are good stewards of their money or they’re not going to give it to us,” said David W. Smith, chancellor of the archdiocese.

The budget numbers do not include costs related to the abuse scandal. That revelation will come by the end of the summer, when the church expects to settle claims in more than 500 cases, said Smith. Lawyers for alleged victims, though, have warned of court battles that could last many years.

According to Smith, the Boston archdiocese intends to show that money to settle lawsuits by abuse victims has not and will not come directly out of the collection basket or the annual Catholic appeal. Instead, the funds are coming from insurance, the sale of church property and special fund raising, Smith said.

Because money is fungible, some people involved in Catholic philanthropy are skeptical of this distinction between money dropped into the collection basket and other sources of funding and income (besides insurance).

That said, financial reformers like Butler are giving tentative praise to the Boston archdiocese for its intentions and wholehearted praise to other dioceses that have gone all the way.

Besides Chicago and Baltimore, archdioceses that have made a fairly open book of their spending on abuse cases include Los Angeles, Milwaukee and Seattle. Among smaller dioceses are Phoenix and Tucson in Arizona, Belleville and Joliet in Illinois, Worcester, Mass., and several in California, according to Butler.

“Our faith calls upon us as believers to forgive,” Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore said last September when he accounted for spending related to sexual abuse by clergy since 1987. “But we leaders of the church must earn forgiveness and rebuild trust by being resolute, consistent, open and accountable in our actions.”

At the time, Keeler reported that the Baltimore archdiocese and its insurers had spent more than $5.6 million on legal settlements, counseling and other measures related to sexual abuse (including more than $600,000 for the living expenses of suspended priests). He said insurers covered $4.1 million of that amount, in eight cases of abuse.

Butler said disclosure would give dioceses a chance to show they are good stewards and thus worthy of greater giving by churchgoers.

“We come at this from the perspective of urging Catholics to be much more active and to contribute more to the dioceses,” Butler said, referring to FADICA and its member donors.

“If you want people to trust you, and they have to trust you to give you their money, you’re going to have to open up and show them what you do with the money.”

Still, divulging these numbers and sources is not as simple as opening up the books. For one thing, insurance companies might not be thrilled with the idea of announcing to the world how much they and the church have spent in past cases, because that could set a minimum dollar precedent in future cases.

And, disclosures that reveal what dioceses have paid out to past litigants might violate confidentiality agreements in those cases, explained the Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of the weekly Jesuit magazine America.

“A lot of people pushing for secrecy are not the bishops,” he said.

Nevertheless, many see financial transparency as key to making the hierarchy more accountable. Last fall, a FADICA survey found that 79 percent of Catholic parishioners said every diocese should give a full accounting of abuse-related costs.

Some including Butler believe that if bishops had been more open about the money all along, they would have been less likely to repeatedly reassign priests accused of molesting minors.

“People would have been able to at least ask questions _ `What are these payments all about?’ And that could have prevented a situation where we had these reassignments of dangerous people.”

DEA END BOLE