Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger referred to a Buffalo (N.Y.) Diocese bankruptcy filing as a "probability" and said that representatives of other Catholic dioceses that went through bankruptcies have told him the process ultimately was the correct way to maintain their missions and address mounting legal claims by childhood victims of clergy sexual abuse, the Buffalo News reported. “What they have said is painful and tedious as it is, that in the long run what resulted was more confidence and that people feel they understand in a credible way what assets are and aren’t available, what the true mission of the diocese is,” he said. Scharfenberger said that he specifically consulted with the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, which filed for bankruptcy in 2015 and emerged last year with a settlement in which it agreed to pay $210 million to victims. He gave no timeline for making a bankruptcy filing for the Buffalo Diocese, but appeared to be leaning toward such a filing, referring to it first as a “possibility” and then calling it the “probability of chapter 11.”
