By Dietrich Knauth
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday for the second time, after a recent change to California law prompted 457 legal claims alleging decades-old sex abuse by the diocese's priests.
San Diego is the site of Catholicism's first foothold in California, through the founding of Mission San Diego de Alcala in 1769. The diocese serves 1.4 million Catholics, with 96 parishes, 204 active priests, and about 80 Catholic schools.
The diocese first filed for bankruptcy in 2007, ultimately reaching a $198 million settlement of 144 sex abuse lawsuits. That claims were triggered by a 2003 California law that allowed victims of childhood sex abuse to bring lawsuits long after the normal statute of limitations had expired.
In 2019, California again re-opened the statute of limitations and created a new three-year window for filing older sex abuse cases, causing 457 new claims to be filed against the San Diego Diocese, the diocese's court filings showed.
More than 60% of the newly filed claims represent abuse that allegedly occurred more than 50 years ago, the diocese said.
San Diego Cardinal Robert McElroy said the bankruptcy stemmed from "the moral failure of those who directly abused children and teenagers, and the equally great moral failure of those who reassigned them or were not vigilant" in stopping the abuse.
A bankruptcy filing will enable the church to equitably compensate sexual abuse victims without endangering the diocese's religious mission, McElroy said in a statement before the bankruptcy filing.
The diocese's missions, parishes and schools are not part of the bankruptcy filing but will contribute to an eventual settlement of sex abuse claims in the diocese's bankruptcy, McElroy said.
Sex abuse lawsuits have driven several other large Catholic dioceses into bankruptcy in recent years, including the Archdioceses of San Francisco, Baltimore and New Orleans, and several dioceses in New York. Those dioceses are in states, like California, that passed similar laws allowing new lawsuits to be filed for older sex abuse claims.