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	Diocese: Bankruptcy Does Not Derail Plans for Catholic High School in North County By Teri Figueroa North County Gazette [California] March 17, 2007 http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/03/18/news/top_stories/21_14_543_17_07.txt North County — An attorney for the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego said last week that the diocese's recent bankruptcy filing will not scuttle longtime plans to build a Catholic high school in North County. However, there are no solid plans in place for when the school, which is slated to be called Pax Christi, would break ground or even where it might be built. Church officials have included Pax Christi in their plans for high school construction for a few years, but the recent bankruptcy filing by the diocese raised the question of whether it would affect plans for the North County campus. In the last two years, the diocese has opened up one new high school in San Diego County, and is close to completing a second high school, which the church hopes to open this fall. "The Diocese of San Diego remains committed to building Pax Christi High School to meet the needs of Catholic secondary education in the North County," diocese attorney Micheal Webb wrote last week in an e-mail response to a request for information about the long-planned project. In his e-mail, Webb also said that the diocese's bankruptcy Chapter 11 reorganization filing "has not changed the plan for this project." Diocese spokesman Rodrigo Valdivia forwarded the North County Times' questions about Pax Christi to Webb, who is representing the diocese in the bankruptcy proceedings. Aside from sending the one e-mail response, neither Webb or Valdivia responded to requests for more information about Pax Christi or the diocese Secondary Education Initiative. The local diocese — which covers San Diego and Imperial counties — filed for federal bankruptcy protection on Feb. 27, a move that brought a temporary halt to more than 140 pending lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by priests with the diocese. The bankruptcy filing came on the eve of the first of the civil trials against the local diocese. It followed negotiations that failed to produce a settlement in the civil suits, which were filed in state court. A week after the bankruptcy filing, church officials asked federal bankruptcy court Judge Louise DeCarl Adler to release some diocese money so it could to continue to pay to build a Catholic high school already under construction in the South Bay neighborhood of Eastlake. Church attorneys told Alder that construction on that $50 million school, to be named Mater Dei, is more than 80 percent complete and is scheduled to be done July 2. Mater Dei is scheduled to open in the fall with an estimated 850 students, they told the judge, who granted funds for construction, at least until she re-evaluates the case in April. Mater Dei is the second of three high schools the diocese has long planned under a program the church dubbed the Secondary Education Initiative. The first of those schools was Cathedral Catholic High School, which opened its doors in Carmel Valley in the fall of 2005 and now has about 1,670 students. Cathedral Catholic was budgeted at about $45 million, and was built on about 45 acres of land. Tuition for the school is slightly more than $10,000 a year. Pax Christi is the third of the three high schools the local diocese has planned under its Secondary Education Initiative. In his e-mail, Webb said Pax Christi "is intended to be on a par with Cathedral Catholic and Mater Dei high schools." However, Webb said, no specific plans nor architectural drawings for Pax Christi have been developed. The diocese Web site states that Pax Christi, once built, will accommodate up to 2,000 students. The patron saint of the school will be St. Francis of Assisi. Webb said "the ultimate cost of the facility has not been determined" nor has a timetable for the development of Pax Christi been established. The diocese said it is not sure where the school will be built. Seven years ago, the diocese bought land next to Mission San Luis Rey in Oceanside to build the school. But in his e-mail last week, Webb said officials are looking into other locations, including "an alternative site in Vista," which he said is under evaluation. That Pax Christi is nowhere near the groundbreaking stage is on par with comments diocese officials made in September 2000, when they told the North County Times that any construction on Pax Christi before the end of the decade was unlikely. The local diocese covers San Diego and Imperial counties, has 98 churches, runs 46 schools and has nearly 1 million parishioners, according to bankruptcy court documents. Some local parishioners agreed there is a demand for a Catholic high school in the northern reaches of the county. "It would serve the community well," said Lisa Groot, a Solana beach resident whose children attend diocese-run schools. Groot said she knows of one family living in a north coastal area that wrestled with the question of sending their high school-age daughter south to attend Cathedral in Carmel Valley, or north to a Catholic school in San Juan Capistrano. San Diego is the fifth diocese in the nation to file for bankruptcy protection because of dozens lawsuits seeking damages from sexual abuse. So far, the local diocese has reached settlements with 43 people, but 143 lawsuits are still unresolved. Plaintiffs in other priest-abuse cases in California have seen settlement awards between $1 million and $1.6 million each, according to attorneys representing more than two dozen people in lawsuits against the San Diego diocese. Contact staff writer Teri Figueroa at (760) 631-6624 or tfigueroa@nctimes.com.
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