The Archdiocese of New York is now offering $800 million to settle the legal claims of sex-abuse victims. Toss in the legal fees and the costs involved in raising money for that settlement (including the sale of the chancery building), and the total cost will probably approach $1 billion.

Last year, the best estimates of the total costs paid by American Catholic dioceses and religious orders to settle sex-abuse claims ran to around $5 billion. That figure is almost certainly low, because again it does not include all legal costs. Nor does it include the sums quietly paid to victims (in exchange for non-disclosure agreements) before the scandal broke and the lawsuits began in earnest.

Now add another $1 billion from New York, and the grand total looks like something more than $6 billion. And we’re not done yet.

Coincidentally, the head of the UN’s World Food Programme recently said that $6 billion would be enough to save 42 million people from famine.

Sometime around 1995, I predicted in a radio interview that the sex-abuse scandal— then barely on the horizon— would pose the greatest crisis for the Church since the Reformation. As the years roll by, and the damage done— of which the monetary costs are the least serious— becomes ever more visible, I think I too underestimated.