AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
By CATHERINE ARMITAGE March 26, 2014
Sydney’s Catholic archdiocese has been forced to open its books for the first time, revealing assets worth more than $1 billion and raising questions about why it has failed to spend more on compensating victims of church sex abuse.
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Accounts tendered to the child sex abuse royal commission on Tuesday show the archdiocese’s total assets have nearly doubled since 2004 to more than $1 billion at the end of last year. Over the same period, its net assets grew from $137 million to $192 million.
The healthy annual net surpluses caught the attention of commission chairman Justice Peter McClellan as he quizzed archdiocesan business manager Danny Casey on payouts to victims since 2001 of just less than $8 million.
Justice McClellan described the accounts as ”commendable from your point of view” because of the surpluses that ran as high as $44 million in 2007. Last year, the net surplus was $9 million.
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