Ramon Antonio Vargas and David Hammer of WWL Louisiana in New Orleans
New Orleans’ Roman Catholic archbishop Gregory Aymond is submitting his resignation Tuesday, on his 75th birthday, fulfilling a church requirement – though it is unclear if Vatican officials would immediately accept it with his scandal-plagued organization’s expensive, highly contentious bankruptcy case still unresolved.
In a letter issued on Friday to priests and deacons under his command, Aymond cited canon – or church – law that required him to offer to retire because of his age. But he said he also offered to remain in office until the resolution of the bankruptcy.
Precisely when he retires is up to Pope Francis, who “can accept the resignation or ask me to remain at this time”, he wrote in the missive. “It has been a privilege to serve in the archdiocese of New Orleans, and I appreciate your fraternal support and prayers during this challenging time of reorganization,” Aymond’s letter said.
Historically, the Vatican’s responses to such age-mandated resignation offers can vary, former US Vatican embassy attorney Tom Doyle told New Orleans’ CBS affiliate, WWL Louisiana. The archbishop of Boston since 2003, Cardinal Seán O’Malley, recently retired at 80 years old, well beyond the mandated retirement age.
“The ones they let hang around tend to be the ones who haven’t appeared to screw up,” Doyle said. “But … very often, they’re not aware of what’s going on at the diocese level.”
Doyle said if the pope accepts the resignation, he has two options: name a successor immediately or appoint an archdiocesan administrator as a caretaker until a new archbishop arrives.
Aymond’s leadership of the US’s second-oldest diocese is at a critical juncture. The archdiocese presented one plan to reorganize the church and compensate more than 500 survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of clergymen. For their part, attorneys for a committee of survivors presented another that seeks far more money.
Church lawyers maintain that the archdiocese and its affiliates – but not their insurers – should pay about $125,000 to each sexual abuse claimant. Survivors’ attorneys countered that the church, its affiliates and insurers should pay $2m per claim. Recent bankruptcy cases involving Catholic dioceses elsewhere have cost more than $600,000 for each abuse claim.
The two sides have tentatively agreed on non-monetary settlement terms, including a public release of confidential personnel files outlining how the archdiocese managed the careers of clergymen faced with substantial allegations of child sexual abuse.
Meanwhile, since at least April, Louisiana state police has been investigating New Orleans’ archdiocese for suspected child sex trafficking. A state police search warrant alleges “widespread sexual abuse of minors dating back decades” was “covered up and not reported to law enforcement”.
One of the city’s longtime Catholic priests, Lawrence Hecker, is tentatively scheduled to be tried on charges of child rape, kidnapping and other crimes on 3 December, decades after he confessed in writing to his superiors that he sexually molested or harassed several minors whom he met through work. The church took steps under the leadership of Aymond and his three predecessors to keep Hecker’s abusive past hidden from the public, media investigations by the Guardian and WWL Louisiana have shown.
Aymond took a step to move his archdiocese past the worldwide church’s ongoing clergy molestation scandal in 2018 when he published a list disclosing the names of 57 priests and deacons with credible child molestation allegations against them. The roster was meant to be a conciliatory gesture to abuse survivors who demanded full transparency from him.
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But the list has grown to nearly 80 names and spurred so much civil litigation from clergy molestation survivors that Aymond had the archdiocese file for chapter 11 federal bankruptcy protection in 2020. He initially indicated his belief that the archdiocese could settle its bankruptcy for $7.5m or less. Yet the fees alone for attorneys and other professional advisers have soared past $40m.
On Tuesday, attorneys for some clergy abuse survivors involved in the archdiocesan bankruptcy requested permission to eventually depose Aymond, certain attorneys who have represented him and an outside expert who published a report with suggestions on how to settle the bankruptcy. Their request wasn’t immediately ruled on.
Some abuse survivors have long demanded Aymond’s resignation over his management of the archdiocese’s affairs in the lead-up and aftermath of the 2018 list’s publication.
But James Adams, who served for a time as the chairperson of a committee representing the interests of survivors in the archdiocese’s bankruptcy, said he believed it would be helpful for Aymond to remain involved in the chapter 11 process no matter what the Vatican decides with respect to his retirement.
“It was Archbishop Aymond who placed the archdiocese … in bankruptcy protection,” Adams said. “It’s Archbishop Aymond who has been monitoring this and instructing his counsel all the way through this process.”
Alluding to how Aymond has repeatedly expressed a desire to “walk with the survivors down this path of healing”, Adams added: “I would expect … [him] to stick around even if another archbishop is appointed here.”