Sacramento Bishop on bankruptcy: Abuse ‘will be a part of who we are for a long time’ | Opinion

Bishop Jaime Soto sat down with me recently to talk about the possibility that the diocese he oversees may declare bankruptcy in response to what he’s called the “staggering number” of clerical sex abuse claims.

It’s staggering but no longer surprising that in this diocese alone, some 270 claims were made possible by the 2019 law that allowed Californians to file suit over old allegations. The state lifted the statute of limitations for a three-year period, through the end of 2022.

California decided that justice too long delayed need not be justice denied. As long as there’s no statute of limitations on pain and suffering, let the guilty pay; good.

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But I am not sure what to think about the likelihood that with most of California’s dozen dioceses facing insolvency, eight of the 12 may also see no alternative to filing for Chapter 11. The Diocese of Oakland just filed. And yes, others may very well have to seek this protection because they failed to provide the protection they owed the children in their care.

Victims must be compensated as fully as possible. And — not but — doing so will come at a cost. Not just to those who deserve to be punished, but to all those the church serves.

There is not even agreement about whether bankruptcy is best for victims, with survivors generally fearing that Chapter 11 is just one more way for the church to avoid transparency and shield certain assets. Those who specialize in bankruptcy law argue that this process, on the contrary, not only puts all assets on the table but is the best way to make sure all settlements are equitable.

In an interview in his office in the large pastoral center, where diocesan employees don’t expect to work much longer, Soto said he has not concluded that bankruptcy is inevitable, but “it is a looming possibility and because of that, even now, any decisions I make for the diocese have to be made in the light of this possibility. … I have to trust that time is going to show me and us, the church, how we move forward.”

Is the assumption that most California dioceses will eventually declare bankruptcy wrong, then?

“No,” he said. “I know the gravity here in Sacramento, and I think that’s true across the state,” with bishops, himself included, “trying to bring some resolution to the number of claims that are looming.”

The most important thing about resolution, though, Soto said, is not financial and so will not be over even after checks are written: “I start with the fact that we have a very sad and shameful legacy with regard to abuse, and some of the darkness of that is still coming to light. … This goes back decades, but it’s coming to light now, and I’m the bishop now, and I have to look for the best way I can respond to the suffering of the victims over all these decades and also make some atonement for what happened.”

He asks himself, “How do I continue to be the bishop going forward? An important part of that is how I respond to this. Many Catholics, this weighs heavy on them and how I respond to it as a pastor and how I try to lead us through this, this will be a part of who we are for a long time. As long as there are victims, I can’t close the book on that chapter because that’s something we’re still going to live (with). Because many of these people, many of these Catholics, whether they’re still with us or not, are still living with this.”

‘A sobering, chilling revelation’

This attitude is a welcome change from the “Why are we still talking about this?” posture that for so many years made talking about it all the more imperative.

Some of my fellow Catholics still fall into the whataboutism of asking why there are no grand jury reports on the history of abuse in other institutions; maybe there should be, but making the history of crimes by priests public was an important service.

I was covering the Vatican for The New York Times at the time of the 2002 crisis, and Soto’s expression of humility is miles from what church leaders in Rome said back then. They made excuses, feigned ignorance and cast antisemitic aspersions, too, dismissing allegations as the handiwork of American media enemies of the church. Jews, they meant.

As The Bee’s Marcos Breton wrote in a column five years ago, lay Catholics, too, often reflexively defended the accused priests they knew. Soto made that and other mistakes, he said, and learned from it.

Before Soto knew better, Breton wrote, he “acted in a way that showed he cared more about the priests doing the abusing than the children; believed that therapy for pedophiles was the way to go; he would comment on the sexual abuse of priests without really knowing the facts. He thought that sex abuse by priests needed to be kept secret.”

“Soto believed in all those falsehoods when he was rising through the ranks of the Diocese of Orange County, his home base before moving to Sacramento at the end of 2007, and he acted on them accordingly. What pains him most now is a letter he wrote to a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge to plead for mercy for a priest who preyed on altar boys.”

The man, Andrew Christian Andersen, a seminary classmate of Soto’s, was convicted on 26 counts of molesting altar boys, but got off with a suspended sentence and then re-offended in New Mexico, where he’d been sent for therapy.

“My letter was stupid and naive,” Soto told Breton in 2018. “I wrote the letter without any real knowledge about what he had done and the harm he had caused. ... When (Andersen) re-offended, it was a sobering, chilling revelation.”

So what does atonement look like from the inside?

“Priests are haunted by the abuse crisis, one because it involves guys they know.” But at least as hard, Soto said, is “coming to the awareness that we might know this guy, but we don’t know the victim. To come to understand the pain that the victim suffered? Once a priest recognizes that, it breaks your heart when you understand what one of us did. The betrayal to the victim and the victim’s family is umpteen magnitudes worse, but there was also the betrayal to us. We feel betrayed. And we owe it to ourselves to be more vigilant with one another.”

How, for example? “When a guy goes off the radar screen, he doesn’t come to meetings, or he disconnects, that’s a real warning sign. Maybe it’s not always abuse, but something’s not right. The outreach that I owe and we owe not just to him but also to the people that he serves is to hold each other accountable.”

To do that, “I require the priests to do regular workshops on sexual abuse and also on the protocols for reporting, and that gets kind of frustrating, but they also understand we have to do this, this is the new normal. There’s always the temptation to say, ‘Why can’t we go back to the way it was before?’ Well, we can’t. And the moment that we’re in right now is a reminder of why we can’t.”

Accountability doesn’t always feel like ministry, he said. “It feels like policing, but it is ministry. That’s how we ensure that people can feel safe.”

Ensuring safety, making amends

Today’s seminaries do a better job of both vetting and educating future priests, Soto said. “The discussions on sexuality are much more candid, where before, there wasn’t much in that regard. The idea of self-knowledge and understanding your own sexuality wasn’t really a big part of seminary formation. The generation of men coming in now are more comfortable in sexuality in terms of talking about it.”

With all of this in mind, what does Soto see as the best arguments for and against declaring bankruptcy?

“Bankruptcy would be a prudent option because everything will be on the table. With reason, people will question, ‘Is this enough?’ Bankruptcy puts a light on everything (and says to victims that) this is everything.”

And the argument against taking that step? “By not going into bankruptcy, I’d be able to continue a lot of good things we’re doing as a diocese.”

What would likely have to be cut? “One real glaring example would be the ministry we have at the universities.” And it would make fundraising harder, he said, “because the Catholic community worries, ‘Is that money going to go to settlements?’ People who make their gifts and donations for the church, they want it to go for the good works of the church, not for the sins of the clergy.”

Would donors not see compensating victims as a good work of the church?

“It’s my responsibility to lead the church in that way — that it’s not just a matter of getting past the lawsuits, but recognizing the pain, and that there are real people involved, people who have been hurt by the church. As much as we encourage the other works of mercy, this is also a work of atonement for what happened.”

This time, making amends will cut much deeper, he said. “When the Diocese of Sacramento settled a group of claims previously, a good portion of that was insurance, and in many cases, the limits were met.” Now, while insurers will still have a role to play, “I do expect that it’s going to have to come from the diocese.”

Which is what victims want, right? “I don’t know. I’m assuming that some want this to be painful for us, and it will be, but at the same time, it’s important to make sure that we can continue our charitable works and schools and to be available to provide some haven of mercy throughout the 20 counties that are under the diocese.”

Are decisions about compensation hard calls to make?

“The stories are difficult. We’re dealing with realities it’s hard to put a price tag on. … There’s some virtue to statute of limitations, because the older the claims are, the harder it gets” to investigate what happened.

“And yet, the reality of sexual abuse,” he said, is that “it takes a long time” for victims to come to terms with what happened to them.

Compensation will always fall short, and atonement will never be complete. But that Bishop Soto knows this will make more healing possible.