On December 10, 2005, a Sosoliso Airlines DC-9 aircraft crashed in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, killing 127 passengers. Sixty of those killed were students of Loyola Jesuit College in Abuja, Nigeria. This reflection was written shortly after the event.
Thanks for the informative, if sobering, article by Fred Naffziger on the bankruptcy situations in the Portland and Spokane dioceses (3/27).
I have never been able to understand why our Catholic dioceses do not simply implement the spirit and letter of Canon 1256 and set up each parish’s property in an express trust, with the bishop as the sole trustee. That way, instead of having to argue from canon law, apparently ineffectually thus far, that this property ought to be considered a constructive or resulting trust, despite the fact that the bishop holds legal title, American courts might then be forced to recognize the equitable rights of local parishioners and their successors in such property. This would at least offer protection to the majority of parishes that never had any instance of sexual abuse by the clergy.
Paul A. Becker, Esq.