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in legal fees to prevent the release of clergy files, and the real possibility of his own indictment, Mahony did not have access to the $200 million for which, he told John Allen, the Vatican gave him “permission” to raise via alienation of property. That would include cash reserves and liquid assets. He had already committed $60 million seven months earlier, resolving the first sequence of cases. “By our estimate, he didn’t have access to more than $40 million in liquid assets,” said Steve Rubino. “We got trial dates in 2006 to push the negotiating toward conclusion. A certain judge I bumped into at Starbucks told me Mahony was in Rome—raising money. He had to have gotten at least $100 million in Rome to pull it off.”

According to a Los Angeles Times analysis:

More than $114 million has been promised in previous settlements, bringing the total liability for clergy misconduct in the Los Angeles Archdiocese to more than $774 million. The figure dwarfs the next largest settlements in the U.S., including those reached in Boston, at $157 million, and in Portland, Ore., at $129 million.

Hennigan said the archdiocese expected to pay $250 million in cash, with the balance coming from insurers and religious orders.51

The archdiocese borrowed $175 million from the Allied Irish Bank in securing the settlement funds.52 Boucher said he got wind of AIB involvement in spring 2007; although he had no proof, he suspected that the Vatican provided a loan or pass-through support via AIB to the archdiocese. Allied Irish Bank, a registered company in the Republic of Ireland, was formed in 1966 through the merger of three different Irish banks. The firm branched into the United States in the 1980s. AIB helped the archdiocese build the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. “The funds for the [mausoleum] construction were borrowed from the archdiocesan cemeteries with the assistance of the Allied Irish Bank,” according to a history of the cathedral.53 AIB’s “core business in America” has been “funding not-for-profit institutions. AIB ‘banks’ 45 of 194 Catholic dioceses and archdioceses,” according to the Irish Times.54

Eight months after the settlement the archdiocesan newspaper, The Tidings, cited “a bank loan of $175 million and liquidated investments worth $117 million. The administrative office was facing a $12 million deficit.

The $175 million bank loan is expected to be partially repaid with proceeds from the sale of up to 51 archdiocesan properties (estimated at $107 million). The balance remaining at the end of the loan term in 2011 is estimated at $50 million; this amount may have to be refinanced …

The loss of this income, as well as the interest on the bank loan and the interest on the settlement guarantee, means that the Administrative Office will incur a budget deficit of approximately $12 million a year.55

Cardinal Mahony denied an interview request for this book. The archdiocesan spokesman, Tod Tamberg, declined to discuss Allied Irish Bank. Mahony’s approach to the funding crisis for abuse cases stands out in high relief from his counterpart down Interstate 5 in the San Diego diocese. As the settlements there reached an impasse, the judge set a trial date. Bishop Robert Brom had his attorneys file for Chapter 11 protection from bankruptcy in order to halt the trial and presumably bargain down the opposition. Judge Louise DeCarl Adler ordered an independent audit of its assets by a forensic accountant, former FBI agent R. Todd Neilson. San Diego, the fifth-largest diocese in the United States, had vast property holdings. Neilson discovered that the diocese had claimed its ninety-eight parishes as assets in applications to banks and bond markets, but excluded them for Chapter 11 protection. He noted that after the bankruptcy filing, an auxiliary bishop authorized $69,963 in checks from a special foundation to a parish deacon who “supposedly transferred the funds to an individual … who had expertise in importing and exporting goods from Colombia”—to help a poor parish in Colombia. “An additional $23,000 was