2 months ago
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Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday named an eventual successor to New Orleans’ embattled Catholic archbishop, Gregory Aymond, two weeks after his archdiocese agreed to settle with survivors of clergy sexual abuse for $230m.
Leo, history’s first US pope, named bishop James Checchio of Metuchen, New Jersey, as the coadjutor bishop of New Orleans. The role positions Checchio to assist Aymond initially and then succeed him when he retires.
Checchio, 59, handled the fallout in Metuchen of the explosive 2018 sexual misconduct revelations of one of his predecessors there, Theodore McCarrick. Prior to arriving in Metuchen in 2016, Checchio had served as the rector of the US seminary in Rome for a decade.
Aymond reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 last November, suggesting that the Vatican kept him in place to finalize the abuse settlement and allow for an organized handover to his successor.
The New Orleans archdiocese agreed on 8 September to a $230m proposed settlement to end one of the US church’s longest and most contentious battles over abuse claims. It had proposed in May to pay at least $179.2m in response to more than 500 abuse claims, but victims’ attorneys opposed the deal as too low.
Survivors have until late October to vote on whether or not to approve the revised settlement. If approved by two-thirds of survivors, payments could begin disbursement by next year.
The archdiocese had filed for bankruptcy in May 2020, rather than handle each abuse claim separately, which survivors say allowed church leadership to avoid facing tough questions in court.
The archdiocese’s largest insurer, Travelers, for now has held out against a settlement. If it ultimately decides to contribute to a settlement rather than risk facing litigation from individual abuse claimants, the amount of the settlement in the New Orleans archdiocese bankruptcy would ostensibly increase from $230m.
Aymond had resisted calls for his resignation over the church’s management of its decades-old clergy abuse scandal, which in New Orleans has thrust the local archdiocese under law enforcement investigation for alleged child sex trafficking.
Media investigations in February revealed that the archdiocese received help from executives of professional American football’s New Orleans Saints with respect to softening critical press coverage of the church’s management of the clergy-abuse scandal.
