The Catholic Church—Christianity—is built on the Rock of Peter. Archeologists literally found his bones underneath Saint Peter’s Basilica. The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Meanwhile, a surge of young into the Church is cause for great hope in rollicking times.

There is a bit of a revival.

But problems?

The word “devastation” might be most apt. The financial hit of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in America stands right now at about eight billion, a disaster by any measure, almost hard to assimilate.

To be precise the tally (including what has been paid to lawyers) is $8.249 billion.

That could buy 160,000 new cars at $50,000 each, or 40,000 homes (for the needy) at $200,000 each. It could give one million families $8,000 apiece. It could build eight hundred community centers at ($10 million each). It could fund 160 hospitals or major medical clinics at $50 million per or buy 400,000 wheelchairs at $20,000 each. It could fund 8,000 parish or school repair projects (nearly half the number of Catholic churches in the U.S.) at $1 million each.

It could send up to two million people from North America to Fatima, Portugal, for a pilgrimage.

Last and equally achingly, that sum could build about eight Saint Patrick’s or Notre Dame cathedrals.

Since mid-2024, the financial reckoning over clergy sexual-abuse claims in the United States has continued to climb sharply, with the latest and most dramatic figure coming from the Archdiocese of New York, which alone has recently proposed an $800 million settlement for approximately 1,300 survivors.

A true shame. No hiding that. How successful in far too many instances has the devil been!

But let us also view it as a Godsent purification, one that, after outright calamity (picture a spiritual category-five storm), will lead, we pray, to a leaner, cleaner, stronger institution.

Keep in mind that the vast majority of priests are good. They, and we, are also victims. The best-known U.S. study, the John Jay Report, found that from 1950 to 2002, 4,392 Catholic clergy were accused, out of about 109,694 active priests and deacons — roughly four percent. The number is small but the betrayal grave.

In Canada, Public Safety Canada likewise cites the share of abusive priests as “approximately four percent of all priests.” That’s less than one in twenty (at least officially recognized).

But many dioceses have been badly affected, several decimated. Due to the strain of paying abuse claims and a lack of priests, Chicago has had 187 parishes closed or absorbed; Detroit, 146; New York, 111; Philadelphia, 104; Buffalo, with plans reported for 89 church closings; Baltimore, reduced from 61 parishes to 23; St. Louis, reduced from 178 parishes to 134; and Pittsburgh, reorganized from 188 parishes into 57 parish groupings.

Those figures are more than numbers.

They represent altars, baptismal fonts, confessionals, schools, parish halls, and sacred memories built by generations of sacrifice. It’s hard to believe this happened in our august institution and difficult to comprehend how bishops could have let it happen.

The largest recent figure remains the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which reached an $880 million settlement in October 2024 with 1,353 claimants. (When earlier Los Angeles payouts are included, the archdiocese’s total abuse-related payments have been reported at more than $1.5 billion.)

Is there an accountant in  the house?

Also in New York, the Diocese of Rockville Centre reached a $323 million bankruptcy settlement in 2024. The Diocese of Rochester followed with a $246 million bankruptcy settlement in 2025, involving roughly 470 to 500 survivors. The Diocese of Buffalo has been reported with a $150 million settlement figure. The Archdiocese of New Orleans reached a court-approved bankruptcy settlement of at least $230 million in 2025, covering more than five hundred victims.

The largest recent Canadian case was in Newfoundland and Labrador, where the Archdiocese of St. John’s was ordered to pay $104.1 million to 292 survivors of historical clergy abuse.

Even those figures may understate the final total. The national data in the U.S. begins in 2004, meaning it does not fully capture settlements before that period. Many earlier settlements were confidential. Some religious-order, school, parish, insurance, and bankruptcy-related costs may also not be fully reflected in the public numbers. Other diocesan cases remain unresolved.

The trajectory is unmistakable. The proposed $800 million New York settlement is not an isolated number but a late-stage surge in abuse claims and bankruptcy settlements that has pushed the financial cost of the Catholic abuse crisis in the United States into unthinkable territory.

But we get back to that Rock. Oh, how hell tried!—but how it still has not prevailed and will not prevail against it.