OPINION: After $27.5M settlement, what comes next for Brooklyn and Queens Catholics?
The nightmare of sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church has come home to Catholics in Brooklyn and Queens. On Tuesday, it was announced that the Diocese of Brooklyn had reached a $27.5 million settlement with four men who were repeatedly abused by Angelo Serrano, a layman who taught catechism classes at St. Lucy’s-St. Patrick’s Church in Clinton Hill.
This is one of the largest settlements ever awarded to victims of abuse within the church.
While we have not the slightest pity for Serrano, 67, who is serving a 15-year sentence at Fishkill Correctional Facility for sexual misconduct, for the priests accused in other acts of sexual abuse , or for the bishops and cardinals who covered up this abuse for decades, we have compassion for the thousands of devout Catholics in Brooklyn and Queens who have watched as their church is dragged through the sex-abuse mud.