Archdiocese trusts scrutinized - JSOnline

forensic accounting firm to analyze the archdiocese's transfers of more than $125 million in the weeks and years leading up to the bankruptcy filing.

whether that money - some of which was transferred into newly created trusts - should be able to be used to pay clergy sex abuse claims as part of the archdiocese's bankruptcy and reorganization

Creditors filed a motion Monday asking to hire California-based Berkeley Research Group, which also analyzed church assets in bankruptcies involving the dioceses of San Diego and Wilmington, Del., and the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, in Oregon.

The creditors committee has raised concerns about the creation of at least six trusts in less than four years, the transfer of $70 million in parish funds off the archdiocese's books, and $20 million in funds the church says are restricted for specific purposes and unavailable for sex abuse claims.

The trusts include one for Catholic cemeteries, into which $55 million was transferred in March 2008; and the Faith in Our Future Trust, established to hold proceeds from the $105 million capital improvement campaign launched by the archdiocese in 2007.

The archdiocese maintains that the Faith in Our Future Trust is a separate entity unrelated to the archdiocese, and that the $70 million in parish funds were returned to those congregations. The cemetery trust, it says, merely formalized its treatment of cemetery funds as restricted to those uses.

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