July 20, 2012
My Dear People:
In February of this year I initiated a process whereby I hoped that all of us together — bishop, priests, deacons, religious, and laity — would chart a path forward for our diocesan church for the next three to five years. I called the process “Consultation.”
For two years, a primary focus of the Diocese had been, by necessity, settling the bankruptcy. As I made clear when the Diocese filed for Chapter 11, I believed that doing so provided the fairest possible way to provide compensation to survivors of the crimes of childhood sexual abuse by our priests, given the number of suits filed against the Diocese and parishes, and given the Diocese’s finite resources.