Dozens of Newfoundland churches will be sold to compensate survivors of sexual abuse at Mount Cashel. Catholics are scrambling to buy buildings they thought they already owned.
Almost everything must be sold. Hundreds of properties from 34 parishes will be liquidated, including the towering Basilica of St. John the Baptist, the second-largest Catholic church in the country.
The Archdiocese of St. John’s faces a staggering bill — one that could top $50 million — to compensate survivors of sexual abuse at the former Mount Cashel Orphanage, one of the first major pedophilia scandals to rock the Roman Catholic Church in Canada.
The archdiocese doesn’t have the money. The Vatican isn’t stepping in to help. That means thousands of parishioners could soon lose the churches they thought they owned.
“I don’t understand,” said Jerome Fennelly after what may have been the last Easter mass at Portugal Cove’s Holy Rosary Church, where he’s worshipped for 62 years.
“This house, this church, the church hall, was built by the parishioners in this parish, and the Archdiocese of St. John’s can just come in here and take it and sell it? I don’t understand it at all.”
Parishioners like Fennelly have until June 2 to submit a bid to buy back their church. Other parishes will soon face the same stark choice.
On the one hand, the archdiocese has already seized almost all parish savings, so if worshippers want to buy their church, they have to start from scratch. On the other hand, if they throw in the towel, they run the risk of having no place to worship. All the other churches in the area are also on the market.
It’s an untenable situation for many Catholics, but the legal explanation is simple. In 2019, the Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal ruled that the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of St. John’s, the archdiocese’s secular arm, is vicariously liable for sexual abuse at Mount Cashel in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.
The Christian Brothers of Ireland, a Catholic lay order, ran the orphanage, but the court decided the archdiocese allowed the brothers to commit decades of sexual and physical assaults with impunity.
The judge awarded $2.4 million in damages to four survivors, opening a path to claims from more than 100 more.
https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/selling-churches-to-pay-for-sins