A six-year saga of courtroom battles, survivor testimony, and tense negotiations came to a dramatic close Friday as U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Paul R. Warren approved the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester’s $246 million Chapter 11 plan, a settlement designed to compensate hundreds of survivors of sexual abuse.
The announcement drew rare applause inside the courtroom. And in a moment of symbolism, Judge Warren pulled out a blue shoelace—a stand-in for the ribbon he had promised months earlier—to “tie up” what had been one of the nation’s most closely watched diocesan bankruptcies.
“I wasn’t kidding when I said we’d put a ribbon on this,” Warren said, a nod to remarks from the July 29 confirmation hearing.
From Bankruptcy to Breakthrough
The diocese filed for bankruptcy in 2019, facing an avalanche of child sexual abuse claims. Over years of negotiations, survivors and insurance carriers wrangled over liability and compensation. The breakthrough came only after Continental Insurance—the final holdout—agreed to settle for $120 million on the eve of confirmation hearings this summer.
That deal pushed the total fund for survivors to $246.4 million, cobbled together from contributions by the diocese, its parishes, affiliated institutions, and four other insurers. Every one of the 466 abuse claimants voted in favor of the plan.
