Vatican overturns Buffalo diocese’s $1.3M charge on closing parish

The Vatican has overturned an assessment that would have required a closed Catholic parish in the Diocese of Buffalo to hand over $1.3 million toward the diocese's clergy sex abuse settlement, the latest in a string of rulings against Bishop Michael Fisher's parish assessment decrees.

Holy Apostles Parish had been assessed 80% of its unrestricted cash and assets in the summer of 2025 — the top rate the diocese applied to any parish slated for closure or merger under Bishop Fisher’s “Road to Renewal” restructuring plan. The funds and the sale of parishes being closed are intended to help the diocese pay for a settlement agreement with victims of clergy sexual abuse. 

>> Vatican vetoes Buffalo diocese parish merger, proposed church sale <<

The Save Holy Apostles Parish group appealed the assessment to the Vatican's Dicastery for Clergy and announced via Facebook on Aug. 19 that the dicastery had sided with the parish, revoking Bishop Fisher’s decree and ordering the return of any money already transferred.

The dicastery found Bishop Fisher had erred procedurally under canon law. Its ruling, quoted in the Facebook announcement and in reporting on the letter by the Jamestown, New York, paper the Post-Journal, distinguished between voluntary gifts and required payments and found the diocese had improperly treated the assessment as voluntary, even as its own communications described the payments as mandatory. 

The dicastery also found that transferring the money into a diocesan fund called the St. Joseph Fund improperly cut the parish off from its own assets and that the diocese violated a suspension the dicastery had already issued while the appeal was pending. “There is no licit means by which the Diocesan Bishop can involuntarily require the alienation” of such a large share of a parish's holdings, the dicastery wrote, according to the parish group.

The Holy Apostles reversal follows a pattern. In April 2025, the Vatican told eight western New York parishes they no longer had to contribute to the diocese’s settlement, and this month it issued a similar ruling for St. Brendan on the Lake in Newfane. Save Our Buffalo Churches, an advocacy group representing parishioners across the diocese, has argued the settlement money should come from other sources entirely.

The rulings don’t resolve the underlying bankruptcy. The diocese’s Chapter 11 case is proceeding under a $326 million settlement — $150 million from the diocese, its parishes, schools and other affiliated entities, and $176 million from more than a dozen insurers — that has been agreed to by the diocese and the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors, which represents nearly 900 abuse claimants, according to the Buffalo News. A recently approved case management order allows individual parishes to file their own Chapter 11 cases as additional debtors in the diocese's proceeding, and a hearing on the settlement's disclosure statement is scheduled for Aug. 26.

The Save Holy Apostles Parish group urged supporters not to see the ruling as the final word. 

“Justice for the victims and the protection of the parish ... are not mutually exclusive goals,” the group wrote, noting that both the settlement and the bankruptcy case have not been finalized.