The Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany has agreed to a $148 million sex abuse settlement that would resolve roughly 440 claims filed under New York’s Child Victims Act, the diocese and a committee representing survivors announced on March 27, 2026. The deal was reached inside the diocese’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy and still needs a survivor vote and final approval from the bankruptcy court before any money moves.
Insurance carriers have not agreed to contribute, and the diocese has described the $148 million figure as a “first step” toward a broader global settlement.
What the Settlement Covers
The agreement was struck between the diocese and the Official Committee of Tort Claimants, a group made up entirely of sexual abuse survivors, after mediation. It covers approximately 440 abuse claims filed against the diocese in the Chapter 11 case, No. 23-10244, before Judge Patrick G. Radel in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of New York.
Under the deal, diocesan assets fund a trust. A court-appointed claims administrator reviews each individual claim and pays survivors on a pro rata basis, meaning the amount any one survivor receives depends on the final valuation of all claims measured against the money in the trust. The settlement does not fix per-person payouts. Punitive damages, penalty claims, and interest are excluded from what the trust distributes.
Where the $148 Million Comes From
Roughly $50 million of the total is expected to come from the diocese’s parishes. A Parish Steering Committee, co-chaired by Father James Walsh and Deacon Gregg Wilbur, the diocesan chief financial officer, has been meeting individually with parish leaders to set contribution amounts based on each parish’s savings, debt, and offertory income. By late March 2026 the committee had met with leaders from 40 parishes, with the remaining meetings expected to conclude after Easter.
Parishes are being asked to park their designated funds in bank accounts or low-risk investments until payment is due. A parish that disagrees with its assessed share can appeal directly to Bishop Mark O’Connell. The diocese does not plan to publish a list of individual parish contributions and has said no parishes or schools will close as a direct result of the settlement.
The Unresolved Insurance Piece
The $148 million does not include any contribution from the diocese’s insurance carriers, and that is the largest unfinished piece of the deal. Three groups of insurers are involved: The Hartford Insurance, Interstate Insurance, and a group of London Market insurers that includes Certain Underwriters at Lloyd’s London. Negotiations with all three continue.
The insurers have already lost ground in court. Judge Radel denied motions by Hartford and the London Market companies seeking standing to object to creditor claims, ruling that the insurers’ rights and financial responsibilities could not be determined until a reorganization plan was filed or the insurers acknowledged legal liability. The diocese has said it is working toward a global settlement that would fold in insurer money on top of the $148 million.
What Still Has to Happen
Before any survivor is paid, three things need to occur. All survivors in the case must vote on the agreement. The bankruptcy court must approve it. And the diocese must file a Chapter 11 reorganization plan that would let it exit bankruptcy; that plan has not yet been submitted.
A competing set of creditors is also pushing for attention. Former employees of St. Clare’s Hospital in Schenectady, which closed in 2008, are unsecured creditors in the same case. The hospital’s pension plan, co-founded by the diocese in 1959, was terminated in 2018 with a $50 million shortfall; of roughly 1,100 retirees, about 650 received nothing and 450 received only 70 percent of their promised benefits. Their attorneys have asked Judge Radel to examine whether insurer or parish funds are being improperly reserved for abuse survivors alone, arguing that would give unequal treatment to creditors with similar legal standing. A hearing in the bankruptcy is scheduled for July 8, 2026.
How the Case Reached This Point
The lawsuits behind the settlement were made possible by New York’s Child Victims Act, signed into law on February 14, 2019. The statute extended the civil filing deadline so survivors could sue until age 55, and it opened a “look-back window” from August 2019 through August 2021 that revived claims previously time-barred. Statewide, more than 10,700 lawsuits were filed on behalf of about 14,500 individuals during the window. As of May 2025, only about 27 percent of the cases assigned to judges had been resolved.
The Albany diocese was hit with more than 400 of those suits, with allegations reaching back to the 1960s. The diocese has published a list of clergy “credibly accused” of abuse, last revised in June 2024: 28 priests removed from ministry, 19 deceased priests against whom credible allegations were made, five who resigned or were dispensed from the priesthood, and one deacon who was removed and incarcerated. BishopAccountability.org, a tracking database, lists 105 total accused individuals connected to the diocese.
The Failed Pre-Bankruptcy Plan
In mid-2022, then-Bishop Edward Scharfenberger proposed a “Victims/Survivors Compensation Plan,” a court-approved mediation process pitched as an alternative to litigation or bankruptcy. Survivors’ attorneys rejected it. Lawyers from Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala called the proposal a “last-ditch effort to avoid transparency and accountability” and a “clear attempt by the Diocese to both shortchange survivors and to avoid the transparency of open court proceedings,” particularly the disclosure of personnel files on abusive priests. Attorney Mallory Allen said, “Our clients are not going to go away because of yet another mediation program that is predestined to fail.”
The diocese filed for Chapter 11 on March 15, 2023. The filing automatically stayed the pending state-court lawsuits.
The $8 Million Harmon Settlement
Seven cases were carved out of the stay and allowed to proceed. The first to resolve was brought by Michael Harmon, who alleged abuse between ages 11 and 16 by Father Edward Charles Pratt, a former Vice Chancellor of the diocese. Harmon filed suit in March 2020 under the Child Victims Act. Pratt was among six priests removed from active ministry in Albany in 2002.
The case was set for jury trial in Albany County Supreme Court on October 20, 2025. Days before trial, the diocese settled for $8 million. Harmon’s attorneys called the result a “landmark” and said they hoped it would push the diocese and its insurers to resolve the rest of the cases. That single-plaintiff figure sat in the background of the bankruptcy negotiations that produced the $148 million deal five months later.
Bishop O’Connell’s Role
Bishop Mark O’Connell was installed as the 11th Bishop of Albany on December 5, 2025, succeeding Bishop Scharfenberger, who had reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 in May 2023. O’Connell had served as a canon lawyer in the Archdiocese of Boston during its 2002 abuse scandal and later as its vicar general.
On the abuse crisis, O’Connell said: “If you want it to go away, that’s not who I am as bishop. I want it to be dealt with. I want to comfort those who need comfort. I want to continue to do what I’ve done for many years which is to meet with victim/survivors, hear their stories, be with them, cry with them. It’s not going away, and it would be a sin to want it to go away.”
Where Albany Fits Among New York Dioceses
Albany is the fifth New York diocese to reach a settlement in a clergy abuse bankruptcy, following Syracuse ($176 million), Buffalo, Rochester, and Rockville Centre. Other dioceses face similar pressure: the Archdiocese of New York, which has not filed for bankruptcy, warned pastors in April 2026 that it needed to raise hundreds of millions of dollars more to avoid doing so.