Posted on 11/06/2003 4:42:34 PM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
MILWAUKEE (AP) - The Milwaukee Archdiocese plans to sell church property and set up a $4 million fund to compensate people who have been molested by priests. Property sales would let the church compensate victims without using money donated to the church, Archbishop Timothy Dolan said Thursday. "The funds are limited, but, as the survivors tell us, no amount of money can adequately compensate the hurt done," he wrote in a column in the Catholic Herald newspaper. "Still, we must make the effort to tangibly help them toward restoration." Dolan also said the Roman Catholic archdiocese would switch to an outside mediation program for sexual abuse cases. Some victims were uncomfortable with the current program because it was church-run, he said. Marquette University's mediation center has been asked to help set up the new program. Joe Cerniglia, who said he was an abuse victim when he was 13, said he was encouraged by the compensation plan - but wary. "There's a lot of trust issues here with the church," said the 37-year-old Cerniglia. "There's been so much disappointment that it's hard to predict what will happen in the future." Ten people entered the church-run mediation in the past year, and the archdiocese paid victims in many of those cases, Dolan said. He refused to say how much money they received. Last January, the archdiocese reported paying $4 million to settle 29 sex-abuse claims. The 10-county archdiocese serves 685,000 Catholics in Wisconsin.
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