NEW ORLEANS — Archbishop Gregory Aymond is submitting his resignation Tuesday, his 75th birthday, fulfilling a church requirement. But it’s 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 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 bankruptcy is resolved.
Precisely when he retires is up to Pope Francis, who “can accept the resignation or ask me to remain at this time,” Aymond wrote in the letter. “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 added.
A representative of the Apostolic Nunciature, the Vatican Embassy to the US in Washington, told WWL Louisiana that Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio, was away at the annual US Conference of Catholic Bishops and any information about the pope's response to Aymond's resignation would have to come from Rome.
Historically, the Vatican’s responses to such age-mandated resignation offers can vary, former US Vatican embassy attorney Tom Doyle told WWL Louisiana. For example, 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, while 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 $2 million 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 clergy faced with substantial allegations of child sexual abuse.
Meanwhile, since at least April, Louisiana State Police have 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 scheduled to be tried on charges of child rape, kidnapping and other crimes on Dec. 3, decades after he confessed in writing to his superiors that he sexually molested or harassed several minors. The church took steps under the leadership of Aymond and his three predecessors to keep Hecker’s abusive past hidden from the public, as investigations by WWL and the Guardian 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.
But the list has grown to almost 80 names and spurred so much civil litigation from child molestation survivors that Aymond had the archdiocese file for Chapter 11 federal bankruptcy protection in 2020. He initially told the Vatican the archdiocese could settle its bankruptcy for $7.5 million or less. But the fees alone for attorneys and other professional advisers have soared past $40 million.
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 … Aymond to stick around even if another archbishop is appointed here.”
