The Archdiocese of New York is trying to close out one of the largest clergy sexual-abuse settlements in U.S. history, and its real estate portfolio is footing much of the bill. In May, Archbishop Ronald Hicks proposed an $800 million settlement covering roughly 1,300 abuse claims filed under New York’s Child Victims Act lookback law, with survivors required to unanimously accept the offer by a July 29 deadline to finalize it. Attorney Jeff Anderson, who represents 250 of the claimants, called the proposal “a transcendent triumph of courage by the survivors,” while noting it is “far from full accountability.”
To get there, the archdiocese has been selling property for two years, and it isn’t finished. In February, the Roman Catholic Church of Holy Name of Jesus and Saint Gregory the Great sold its Upper West Side campus at 200 West 97th Street to the Rockefeller Group and Atlas Capital Group for $96 million, with the historic church and rectory preserved and the rest redeveloped into mixed-income housing under the city’s 485x tax abatement program. Representatives of the buyers said the deal “demonstrates what’s possible when thoughtful development aligns with strong public policy.” That followed the October 2024 sale of the archdiocese’s own headquarters at 1011 First Avenue for roughly $100 million to Vanbarton Group, and a $490 million sale of the land under the Lotte New York Palace Hotel in December 2025. Even after those transactions, the archdiocese remained roughly $300 million short of its settlement target earlier this year, which is why it’s now considering the sale of three more West Side properties, including Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and two shuttered Catholic schools.
New York isn’t an isolated case within the Catholic Church. In Baltimore, the archdiocese has been selling parish real estate under a restructuring plan called “Seek the City to Come” while operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection tied to hundreds of abuse claims. In April, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michelle Harner ruled that Baltimore’s individual parishes and schools, as legally separate entities from the archdiocese itself, can continue selling their own real estate even while the archdiocese’s bankruptcy case proceeds. “The record demonstrates that the Debtor is a distinct and separate entity from each parish and school corporation,” Harner wrote, requiring only that the archdiocese give the court two weeks’ notice before assisting with a closing. Bishop Adam Parker, the archdiocese’s vicar general, testified that money from the consolidation was intended to address declining attendance and aging buildings, “not to pay survivor claims.” One of those parish sales, the historic St. Thomas Aquinas Church in the Hampden neighborhood, went to Urban Mennonite Ministries for $1.8 million in April, keeping the building in religious use under a different denomination. As of August, the archdiocese and its survivors’ committee remain hundreds of millions of dollars apart on a final settlement figure, and Harner has twice rejected competing reorganization plans…