More than two-thirds of the victims who signed up to participate in a fund set up by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Camden to compensate survivors of clergy sex abuse were left with their claims unresolved and diminished expectations of seeing a payout, according to previously unreleased information included in the diocese’s bankruptcy filings last week, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Now, 141 people who were encouraged by Bishop Dennis J. Sullivan to come forward and recount their trauma for fund administrators last year must join a line of other creditors — including banks, independent contractors, and lawsuit plaintiffs — to jostle in court over a limited pot of money that will be divided up by the bankruptcy court. In announcing the move last Thursday to become the first diocese in New Jersey to seek chapter 11 protection from creditors, church leaders said that their intent was not to dodge their responsibility to abuse victims, but rather to ensure a future for the institution that serves South Jersey’s nearly half-million Catholics. “The diocese does not seek bankruptcy relief to hide the truth or deny any person a day in court,” wrote the Rev. Robert E. Hughes, the diocese’s vicar general, in a declaration filed with the bankruptcy judge. But “beyond its obligation to creditors, the diocese has a fundamental and moral obligation to the Catholic faithful it serves [and] the greater community.… In order to do this, the diocese must survive.”
