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	With Bankruptcy Gambit, Listecki Launches Last Ditch Effort to Shield Sklba, Church Sex Abuse Secrets By Peter Isely MN SNAP January 4, 2011 http://mnsnap.wordpress.com/snapnetwork-org-wisconsin/ With "bankruptcy" gambit, Listecki launches last ditch effort to shield Sklba, church sex abuse secrets As anticipated and scripted, Archbishop Jerome Listecki of Milwaukee today announced he will try to argue before a federal judge that the archdiocese is somehow bankrupt, although no judgments have been made against it, no debt declared, and no trials scheduled. Why, then, is Listecki saying the archdiocese is bankrupt and, apparently, fully guilty of the fraud they are being sued for? One has to go no further then to see whose deposition was scheduled for this month and now, because of Listecki's announcement, postponed indefinitely into a legal quagmire. The deposition, of course, is of bishop Richard Sklba. Sklba has already been directly identified, in the cases where church documents have been court ordered for release, literally driving the getaway car for some of the archdiocese's most notorious sex offenders, including Fr. Lawrence Murphy, who abused some 200 deaf boys at St. John's School for the Deaf. Indeed, Sklba, according to former archbishop Rembert Weakland, was the "go to guy" on the abuse cover up for at least two decades. It was Sklba who kept victims quiet, misled authorities, and moved sex offending priests into new assignments. In other words, it is Sklba, even more than Weakland, who has the all the damaging details concerning the pattern and practice of fraud and cover up. It is Sklba who was dispatched to parishes and schools to scheme with other clerics as to what to do with the child molester in the rectory. Listecki knows this, of course. And he knows that as a member of the hierarchy he must at all costs maintain the "Bishop's Code"–that one bishop always protects another bishop, regardless of the cost to children, families, parishes and the public reputation and credibility of Catholicism. claring bankruptcy is an admission of guilt. Listecki will be saying to the federal judge: "We are going to be found guilty of fraud, so bail us out of all the damaging testimony and records that would be released through the course of a fraud investigation." Victims in these fraud cases were ready and willing to meet with Listecki and mediate a settlement. But they would not talk about monetary compensation until the archbishop sat down with them and discussed concrete child protection measures that would guarantee the safety of children in the community form clerical predators. Among these proposals, was that Listecki release all the name of known clerical offenders, including child molesters being shielded in the archdiocese by religious orders. Listecki, who met only twice with plaintiff attorneys and never with victims or their families, simply would not talk about anything but money. That is why this bankruptcy maneuver was anticipated. In fact, Listecki, even before entering mediation was threatening victims with bankruptcy in his public statements rather than negotiate any of the accountability and safety measures victims were asking for. The catholic church is, indeed, a financial institution whose resources are vast and unknown. But, it is first and foremost, from its humble beginnings in the streets and catacombs of Rome and throughout the ancient world, a moral community of believers in truth and justice. And moral bankruptcy, for any church, is a far greater catastrophe then a financial one.
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