When Roman Catholic Bishop of Orange Tod D. Brown agreed to a record $100 million clergy abuse settlement, even some of his toughest critics praised him as a moral champion of the church.
But Brown said he was just making a practical _ if financially painful _ decision intended to protect his 1 million-member diocese from fiscal and moral bankruptcy.
If the settlement talks had collapsed, a judge promised to set trial dates for the 87 lawsuits and start depositions and discovery. The bishop said he couldn't take that risk in a state where a jury once awarded $30 million to two people who claimed they were sexually abused by clergy.
"We knew that we could go to a certain point this side of bankruptcy and this settlement is the edge _ it brings us to the brink," Brown said. "Had we not settled and had gone to trial, it would be just a question of time until we reached that total that forced us into bankruptcy."
In a 90-minute interview with The Associated Press in his modest office, Brown discussed his fear of bankruptcy and concerns about how other California bishops, including his longtime friend and classmate Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, would react to the deal.
The stress brought on "mini-anxiety attacks" in the nights before the Dec. 2 settlement, but now Brown is convinced he did the right thing.
"I'm really at peace about this," said Brown, who wears a simple wood-and-silver cross engraved with the words "Come Lord Jesus," his motto.
"It's been very hard because I didn't know where it was going to go or how it was going to go," he said. "It's had an effect on our clergy, and it's certainly had an effect on our people."
Brown's casual demeanor belies his position as leader of the nation's 10th-largest Catholic diocese, based in Orange County. He speaks quietly, his voice trailing off at the end of sentences as he punctuates his comments with soft chuckles and a kindly smile.
Long before the landmark settlement, the San Francisco native had a reputation as a church reformer. Last year, he wrote a seven-point promise to Catholics and alleged abuse victims titled, "Covenant with the Faithful" and nailed it to the door of Holy Family Cathedral in Orange in a public ceremony. The document said the church would work to help victims of clergy abuse and prevent future incidents.
The diocese has since created purple-and-gold lapel pins that symbolize that promise. They are worn by all priests, many parishioners and the church attorneys who worked on the settlement. Brown, 68, said he will write a personal letter of apology to each plaintiff.
Russell Shaw, an author and former press secretary for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, compared Brown to Boston Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley, who inherited that city's explosive clergy abuse scandal and settled it for $85 million within months after Cardinal Bernard Law resigned in late 2002.
"O'Malley courageously, but prudently, decided to settle and apparently Bishop Brown has done the same," Shaw said. "In terms of morale and credibility and important intangible things like that, it's important to wrap it up."
The Orange agreement ended a two-year marathon of closed-door negotiations that peaked with nearly 30 hours of intense talks last week. It marked the single largest payout for clergy abuse claims in the nation and paves the way for the release of confidential church documents that plaintiffs said has been their ultimate goal.
A breakdown of how much will be paid by the diocese and how much by insurers has not been made public. No parishes will close as a result of the deal, Brown said.
Catholic churches in California still face hundreds of claims that were filed under a 2002 law that suspended for one year the statute of limitations on molestation lawsuits. More than 500 lawsuits remain against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, with about 300 more spread out across the rest of the state.
Brown acknowledged the Orange settlement puts the state's other bishops in a difficult position.
"I've had some concerns raised by other bishops wondering what this is going to do to their negotiations and some fear," Brown said of California's nine other bishops and two archbishops. "I have great sympathy for all my brother bishops because they all are facing, to one degree or another, the same problem."