SCHENECTADY — When the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany filed for Chapter 11 last week, it noted that its outstanding litigation with state Attorney General Letitia James and others over the collapse of the St. Clare’s Hospital pension plan is not the reason why it sought bankruptcy protection.
Rather, it was the more than 440 lawsuits that have been filed against the diocese under the state’s Child Victims Act since 2019 — 50 of which have been settled — that prompted the diocese to file for bankruptcy.
The diocese does acknowledge the ongoing St. Clare’s litigation, albeit briefly, in its bankruptcy papers filed March 15 in U.S. District Court in Albany.
But the papers note that the St. Clare’s cases, which have been consolidated in state Supreme Court in Schenectady for both discovery and trial, were “not a precipitating cause” of the bankruptcy as might be assumed.
In fact, the diocese went out of its way to try and assure St. Clare’s pensioners in a press release issued last week that the pension lawsuits are “not the diocese’s purpose for filing” Chapter 11, although it will have the effect of putting the pension litigation “on hold” during the bankruptcy