{"id":46570,"date":"2025-11-20T21:32:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T21:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/46570\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T21:32:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T21:32:09","slug":"catholic-advocates-petition-new-york-foundation-to-fund-pensions-church-preservation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/46570\/","title":{"rendered":"Catholic advocates petition New York foundation to fund pensions, church preservation"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n \"Daniel
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

By Daniel Payne<\/a>\n <\/p>\n

CNA Staff, Nov 20, 2025 \/
\n 10:40 am<\/p>\n

Advocates in New York state are petitioning a Catholic foundation there to help fund major pension shortages and church preservation efforts as well as to help support victims of clergy sex abuse.<\/p>\n

In a Nov. 13 letter to the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation<\/a> in New York City, representatives of the group Save Our Buffalo Churches, sexual abuse victims, and pensioners of the former St. Clare\u2019s Hospital asked the foundation to help the three communities with the \u201cprofound hardship\u201d they are experiencing.<\/p>\n

Numerous parishes in Buffalo have been fighting diocesan-mandated closures and mergers<\/a> over the past year. Hundreds of former workers of St. Clare\u2019s, meanwhile, saw their pensions reduced or eliminated starting in 2018 due to major shortfalls. The hospital itself closed about a decade before.<\/p>\n

Abuse victims, meanwhile, have \u201cbeen locked in a legal morass, denied the long-term healing resources and institutional acknowledgment of the harm they endured,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n

The foundation arose in 2018 after the Diocese of Brooklyn sold the health insurer Fidelis Care. The organization, whose roughly $3.2 billion in assets came from that sale, is named after Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, the first American recognized as a saint, who founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.<\/p>\n

The letter noted that Cabrini \u201cdevoted her life to the people others overlooked,\u201d including immigrants and the poor.<\/p>\n

\u201cGuided by that legacy, we ask the foundation to explore emergency relief, stabilization funds, and community support initiatives\u201d to help fund the three groups.<\/p>\n

The letter-writers asked for a meeting with foundation leaders \u201cto explore potential pathways for assistance aligned with both the foundation\u2019s mission and the pressing needs of survivors, pensioners, and parish communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mary Pruski, who leads the Save Our Buffalo Churches group, told CNA that advocates in New York City would be following up with the foundation this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a complex project and will bring much peace and healing across [New York state],\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Pensioners with St. Clare\u2019s Hospital are currently in the midst of a lawsuit brought by New York state against the Diocese of Albany for what the state attorney general\u2019s office says<\/a> was \u201c[failure] to adequately fund, manage, and protect hospital employees\u2019 hard-earned pensions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The prosecutor\u2019s office alleges that the diocese \u201c[failed] to take adequate measures\u201d to secure the pension fund, including \u201cfailing to make any annual contributions to the pension for all but two years from 2000 to 2019 and hiding the collapse of the pension plan from former hospital workers who were vested in the plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parishioners in Buffalo, meanwhile, have challenged the diocesan parish merger and closure plan, with advocates securing a reprieve against the diocese<\/a> at the state Supreme Court in July.<\/p>\n

The state high court ultimately tossed the lawsuit out in September,<\/a> ruling that the court had no jurisdiction over the dispute.<\/p>\n


\n \"Daniel
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Daniel Payne is a senior editor at Catholic News Agency. He previously worked at the College Fix and Just the News. He lives in Virginia with his family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Daniel Payne CNA Staff, Nov 20, 2025 \/ 10:40 am Advocates in New York state are petitioning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[384,3734,26473,26474,9,24,55,54,56,26472,618],"class_list":["post-46570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-bankruptcy","tag-catholic-news","tag-clerical-sex-abuse","tag-diocese-of-buffalo","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-parish-closures","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}