The other victims
Though a reckoning with victims of church sexual abuse is what drove the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany to declare bankruptcy, those victims are not the only ones the diocese has failed.
More than 1,100 former employees of St. Clare’s, a 166-bed Catholic hospital in Schenectady that closed in 2008, were left scrambling to cover basic living expenses when the pensions they’d earned dried up — or vanished completely. People who thought they were at the end of their working life had the rug ripped out from under them. And the diocese has told them, in effect, we’re sympathetic, but it’s not our problem.
For the Albany diocese, this was yet another failure to keep faith with people who depended on it, and yet another failure to take responsibility for its actions.
When St. Clare’s merged with Ellis Hospital, the state provided $28.5 million to stabilize the pension plan; that was expected to be enough to fund it fully. But then pensioners were told that at the end of 2015, the fund had a $36 million shortfall. Documents that surfaced later suggested the deficit was even greater.
What had happened? Pension fund officials pointed to the recession. But other holdings rebounded from those difficult years; why didn’t this fund?
According to a lawsuit filed by the state attorney general’s office, what had happened was that the St. Clare’s Corp., the board that oversaw the pension, had mismanaged the fund for years, failing to make regular payments to the plan, though it told the Internal Revenue Service that it had.
What’s more, the board had decided in the 1990s to drop out of the federal pension insurance program on a religious exemption, saving themselves the cost of the insurance. In 2017, when they realized the plan was collapsing, the board voted to re-up their insurance, — but they never did, after their lawyers told them it could expose them to potential legal liability.
And after dumping the pension fiasco in everyone’s lap, the St. Clare’s Corp. tried (and failed) to dissolve itself in court.
How did the diocese respond to all of this? By saying it wasn’t their mess to clean up.
In 2017, the diocese emphasized that St. Clare’s Corp. had no corporate connection to the diocese. Despite the church having bought the land where the hospital was built. Despite the pension board having its mailing address at the diocese offices. Despite having a series of bishops and other church officials on that board.
That’s right: They got a “church plan” exemption to get out of paying for pension insurance, and then, when the pension failed, they turned around and said the pension board wasn’t a church entity.
Oh, well, the St. Clare’s Corp. chair pointed out in 2017, the bishop just presided over the board to ensure the hospital abided by Catholic directives. Directives — you mean like helping those in need, keeping your word, doing what’s right? No, not those? Something else?
We know hypocrisy when we smell it, and this is rank.
Though the diocese’s bankruptcy proceedings will focus most on other issues, this cannot be overlooked: The St. Clare’s pensioners also deserve justice. And for retirees, time is running out.