MILWAUKEE — As more victims of clergy sex abuse came forward in the mid-2000s, then-Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan oversaw a plan to pay some abusers to leave the priesthood — and urged that church funds be moved into a trust to shield them from lawsuits, according to documents released yesterday.
The measures were detailed in correspondence between Dolan — now archbishop of New York and a cardinal — and Vatican officials and priests accused of sexual abuse. They were part of about 6,000 pages of documents released by the Milwaukee Archdiocese in a deal reached in federal bankruptcy court with clergy sex-abuse victims suing it for fraud.
The records show that payments were made to some abusers to leave the priesthood and that the church transferred nearly $57 million set aside for cemetery care into a trust as the archdiocese prepared for bankruptcy.
Victims and their lawyers have accused Dolan of bankruptcy fraud over the money transfer, pointing to a June 2007 letter in which he told a Vatican official that moving the funds into a trust would provide “an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.”
In a statement, Dolan called any suggestion he was trying to shield money from victims an “old and discredited” attack.
A spokesman for current Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki said the transfer was a formality to ensure the cemetery-care funding.