Child & Youth Protection

The terms of a recent diocesan bankruptcy settlement, which require parishes to declare an “abbreviated bankruptcy,” are a first for such cases and shows the impact of a Supreme Court ruling in June, a legal scholar told OSV News.

The Diocese of Rockville Centre, N.Y., has reached a preliminary settlement in what it called the “difficult ordeal” of its long-running — and at points contentious — bankruptcy case, while assuring the faithful that “no parishes are closing as a result of this process.”

OSV News recently spoke with Father Michael Bechard, who alleges in a civil lawsuit filed in March with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice that he was sexually abused by Basilian Father Thomas Rosica, a Vatican media expert, founder of a prominent Canadian national Catholic television network and organizer of the 2002 Toronto World Youth Day.