In June, the Pope announced that Archbishop Christopher Coyne of the Catholic Diocese of Burlington, Vermont would be reassigned to the Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut. When the current Hartford Archbishop retires in 2024 he will assume that position. Bishop Coyne has led the Burlington diocese since 2014 and tells WAMC North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley he did not know that the Pope planned to reassign him to Hartford:
I had heard a lot of rumors and pokes at me from various people, especially within the Conference of Bishops and saying, well, you know, you're only 65 and you've been in Burlington now for eight years, so they're probably going to move you. And I kept saying well don't do me any favors. I like where I am and all that. So I was aware that there was some rumblings here and there. But in terms of where and when and how I had no idea until I received a phone call from the papal ambassador. Cardinal Christophe Pierre.
This was announced earlier in the summer. How familiar have you become with Hartford and what will you be doing as coadjutor Archbishop?
Yeah, coadjutor. It's pronounced correctly both ways. I'm basically got about five or six months, until the archbishop retires in April, to spend a lot of time just getting to know people and get out and about to the various churches and parishes and religious communities and works that are going on. So it's a great opportunity to actually have the time to get out and get to meet all those different peoples and works that they're doing before I actually take on the responsibility of administration and teaching and Sacraments and all that. So I am familiar with Hartford more and more, through talking to various people who work there. And also being out and about, you know, on the line and looking, reading about it. And they gave me a very fine report on the state of the Archdiocese. Just as a personal aside, I had to have surgery on my ankle. So I've been laid up for five, six weeks now until I could put weight on it. So I haven't been able to get out and geographically wander. So I've been wandering through the internet, so to speak.
Is Hartford similar to the Diocese of Burlington, where Burlington is the entire state of Vermont?
No. Hartford is actually only three counties in Connecticut. And basically its geography is pretty much right down the middle of the state, with the Diocese of Norwich to the east and down on the southwest corner, towards New York, where there's a lot of population, the Diocese of Bridgeport. But then it also kind of curves up to the north west corner in an area that's very rural, much like a lot of Vermont is. So, while there's a great deal more of urban churches and urban and cities and all that, there still is a significant part of the archdiocese that's in many ways very similar to Vermont in terms of these small, smaller towns, smaller churches that are struggling in many ways to remain open because of changes in demographics, lack of employment, all those things that we struggle with at times here in Vermont.
Well, you mentioned some of the struggles. I mean, Catholic diocese have also had other challenges in Vermont. You've seen a former cathedral in the downtown. It's slated for demolition. You merged it with another cathedral. It's a little unusual to have two cathedrals in one city. Do you find that with the challenges, as you mentioned attendance and lack of worker availability, do you think either Burlington or Hartford risk bankruptcy at this point?
No, I, here in Burlington, in the Diocese of Burlington we are financially stable. We're trying, there's some cases that are pending against us since the statute of limitations was removed. But we're working towards mediation and also towards settlements. Don't want to go to court on these matters for all kinds of reasons. But right now we have the wherewithal to settle if we can negotiate the asking prices into a more reasonable place. That can happen without having to actually go into bankruptcy. So the Diocese of Burlington is fairly stable. Now the Archdiocese of Hartford is much more financially stable. That state has not removed its statute of limitations on abuse of children by priests or by school teachers or anybody, any adult. And because of that they did settle the cases way back when. But there hasn't been this look back yet. And I don't, hopefully, I don't see it happening. But from what I know from looking at the report from the Archdiocese, they're financially very stable. However, they're still over-churched and that's something that needs to be addressed because the archbishop there now, Archbishop Blair, merged a number of parishes into one parish. So you'd have three or four churches in one town or city and now they're only one parish instead of three separate parishes. But you're still, in those places, you still have three buildings, three churches, and that's not sustainable either. So that's where the work is going to be, I think more than anything else in terms of administration is: how do you help these local parishes that are now one parish with three or four buildings to make decisions as to which building stay open and which close. You don't want to be putting all of your efforts into maintaining infrastructure, when it really needs to go into the mission, which is to serve people, to serve the poor and to care for and to proclaim the good news.
Sounds like a lot of the issues that you are going to face in Hartford are similar to what you see in Burlington and what I've heard in some of the dioceses even here in New York State.
Yeah, it's well, you are up in northern, I think you're in Northern New York.
Yes.
And in rural Vermont, what it was a lot of these small town parishes were created because there was the farming communities around there. And they had to be set up so that people could get back and forth within a reasonable amount of time before the car, before we had an automobile. So each of these little parishes had, these little towns, have parish churches with, you know, large families, usually 150 to 200 different people, sometimes they have schools, much like they were in upper New York. And what happens is that a lot of those farms are no longer there. A lot of those large families are no longer there. And a lot of people are no longer there. And people can now drive to other churches in the area. So when you look at the need to sustain some of these small parishes in small towns, it's important to sustain it because it does have a cultural effect in terms of the life of the parish, not just the parish, but also the community itself. You know, some places I've closed people have said the last building standing basically in our downtown is the Catholic Church so please don't close it. But then you say, well, what does that say when all the other businesses and everything else have left for their own reasons? The same reasons that they left are the same ones that the church struggles with. But we do have declining membership and that's also something that's not a matter of demographics, either.
Bishop Coyne, you alluded to the accusations of sexual assault by priests in the diocese and that you're working towards mediation in the ones that have gone to court. Do you anticipate that there will be more accusations that your successor will have to deal with?
I hope not. You know, no one wants to have these stories get unearthed, and because, they're actually horrific. I've said, and I listen to them, and I know and they're there and I believe that people. I believe them. And so we try and do what we can to give justice to them, while also trying to maintain, you know, when you're dealing with 12 different cases, you can't, you have to be, you have to make sure that you take care of everyone that's making a claim against you. You just can't give a significant sum to one person and not have any leftover at the end for the others. But I hope not. Vermont has been pretty blessed, if you want to say that, in that the number of cases against the clergy in Vermont in terms of proportion of the number of clergy is much smaller than that in other places throughout the country. So the number of cases that have had to be settled are fewer. But they still need to be settled and they still need to be taken care of. But, you know, we could settle all the 12 or 14 cases that we have now and then another two or three could appear because there's no statute of limitations. So I can't guarantee anything. But I'm trying to do everything we can to do justice to people while also trying to maintain the integrity of the ability of the church in Vermont to do its works.
You have been Bishop since 2014, which means you have been here when the news and the investigations into the abuse decades ago at the former St. Joseph's orphanage in Burlington came to light. What role have you and the diocese played in providing continued restitution for the survivors of the orphanage? And do you believe that the diocese should continue funding therapy for the survivors?
We've always said continuously throughout this whole, whether we're dealing with abused children, men and women who are dealing with the fallout of abuse in a parish or whether it was at the orphanage, that we would be, we do provide funding for therapy if that's what they need, if that's an important part of what is going to help them deal with the issues that arose from the horrible situations and abuse that they suffered. The orphanage situation. The orphanage closed in 1974. The story that broke on the internet really was a recapitulation of stories that had been carried in the Burlington Free Press back in the 1990s. So it was a, it was a generation later and all of a sudden the story erupts and all these things come forward which had already come forward previously. And there had been settlements, and legal settlements back then with the victims of the orphanage. So when this broke and people, and there was concerns that were raised about it I ordered, well not ordered, but I worked with Vermont Catholic Charities and also the investigative committee set up by the Attorney General of the state to provide freely all of our access to all of our records regarding the orphanage that we had. So we didn't have anybody, there was no legal requirement. There was no, no judge said we had to provide these things. We said we want to work with you. We want to get to the bottom of this. We want to resolve this. And so my staff in Vermont Catholic Charities worked with the investigation of the Attorney General's Office for almost a year and a half, two years, a lot of work a lot of records. And then they provided their report. We also worked with the Burlington Police Department because there were accusations of murders at the orphanage. You know, claims that children had heard that three children or this child had been murdered by a nun. All these kinds of really, you know, awful stories. So the police were involved and they did an investigation. And they said there is no missing, according to the records, there are missing children. They are all accounted for. According to the records there is nothing that leads to any kind of a suspicion of a murder, or whatever these stories, wherever the stories are coming from, there's no proof whatsoever. But because there was no, they couldn't make a complete finding in this matter, they said at this point is there's nothing we can do because there's no evidence of wrongdoing. There's no evidence of anything along these lines and so we find that there's no evidence that these murders actually were committed. So I mean, I'm getting very verbal about all these things. But the fact is, at the end of the day, there was nothing really new that came out of the report that hadn't been there before and that the cases had been settled legally before. And when the former orphans came forward and said they want more restitution we just couldn't do it because we were in the middle of trying to make restitution to people who haven't received any restitution, namely, the cases of those involved in abuse. And as I said to them, we don't have the funding to do that. But we can help you in terms of counseling, if you want to meet with me as the bishop, which I've done with numerous we'll help you that way. But we can't start going back and looking at legal settlements and legal documents and signing off and saying that you can make no longer claims against the diocese. We do that and we open a can of worms for everybody. You know, at the end of the day, what happened to those children in the orphanage was a whole conflation of all kinds of different things, you know, children who came from broken homes, children came from outrageous situations, children wo were just dropped at the door. And then, you know, children, and then they suffered the harshness of the environment there. And, you know, it's all added on to a lot of things. And all I can say is I just do everything I can to help them heal. But we can't provide the kind of restitution and the sense of funding that they want.
Bishop Coyne, you have been saying that you support helping victims of child abuse and neglect. But in March you testified in the Vermont Senate, the Judiciary Committee, against Senate Bill 16, which is, let's see, "An act relating to repealing the exception for clergy to report child abuse and neglect," which would require people who go into the confessional and confess that they've done child abuse. Why did you testify against priests reporting that?
Well, let me start off by saying any employee and any clergy of the Diocese of Burlington are mandatory reporters in almost, in every situation that would normally involve a necessity of reporting abuse. So we all have to go through criminal background checks. We all have to go through training. And then we all are mandatory reporters. In the situation involving the confession you're talking about worship. It's the worship of the church. It's when someone comes and the priest is there mainly as a vehicle to listen to them. But it's a long-standing tradition of confidentiality that anyone can come into a confessional, whether it's the Catholic President of the United States, or a Catholic head of state or whoever they may be, or are just the smallest and the least of the person who comes to church. What they share in the confession to the priest is basically speaking and opening themselves up to God's mercy and God's love and providing that through the priest himself. And the priest is bound by confidentiality. He cannot, in fact, break that seal. And it's also part of the church's worship. It's part of what we do. It's part of what we believe. This state would be one of only, there was only, the only one that comes close to it as Texas, as to removing the vow, the seal of confession. But Texas also removed the confidentiality of lawyer privilege as well involving children, abuse of children. So what I was just testifying to was the fact that we want to maintain the integrity of the church's worship. And that there is no way in which a priest can violate that because of the vow that he made to his own faith in his own church. And so to ask us to pass a law to do that is to ask us to do something that we can't do.
If I recall there's some severe repercussions for the priest through the church if you do violate it.
There is. He would be suspended and he can only be returned to ministry by an action of the pope himself. That's how strongly and the tradition has been held throughout the centuries. You know, you just can't violate it. And I can say, abusers do not come to confession. They don't come into the confessional and tell the priest these things. It's just the nature of the abuser. He or she just does not, psychologically, they just don't do that. And I'm not breaking the seal or anything. I just have never heard in all my years of any kind of a case like this, that you know, there's where something has been testified or made known in confession that you can't react to or do something about. You can with, well, I could withhold, we have what's called the absolution in which there's a prayer in which through the priest the person's sins are forgiven. If there's something serious like that and they're not going to do anything about it and they're not going to stop doing, you can say well I can't give you absolution, they can't possibly give you God's forgiveness. So why are you here? You know, what are you seeking?
Kind of a rock and a hard place for priests in that situation?
Yeah, but honestly, it's not, it's not something that we've tended to encounter. When I was in Boston and I was dealing with all the, when I was there as the spokesperson, and we were dealing with all those cases of all the priests that were accused, there was only one that ever said he did it. And then he went away and he's spent a life of penance and prayer since. The rest of them just refused to acknowledge that, in fact, they had done something even when the evidence was clearly there. You'd meet with them and they'd say I didn't do it. I didn't do it. Just wouldn't say it. It was, it was very frustrating.
Bishop Coyne, we've been talking about some rather dark issues here. But what do you feel are your accomplishments in your time in Burlington?
Well, I, lots of good things, I think. You know, while we merged a number of parishes, and that was a sad moment for a lot of people to see their churches closed, it also helped to bring together people to a much more vibrant and alive place. So that when they would come to a church now they'd find many more people, there are much more resources. So while there's been some movement and consolidation, what you've ended up with is a place that's alive, much more able to take care of itself, maintain itself and celebrate its life in terms of not just its worship but also the good works that it does. I'm also very pleased with the fact that we're pretty much are one of the largest provider, private provider, of social services in the state of Vermont due to the fact that every one of our churches have some kind of an outreach involving a food bank or collections, or providing extra kind of help for people who are in need. Through our Vermont Catholic Charities we provide emergency shelter and emergency aid as we can, depending on until we run out of money each month. But we just try and do the best we can. So I'm very proud of the fact that we as Catholics in Vermont continue to do what we've always do, which is celebrate our faith and worship together, but also continue to just reach out to those who are on the margins and those who are needy, irregardless of whether they share our faith or even if they're, you know, they're just new people to the community. We take care of these people. During COVID while we did have to close our churches for the six weeks, like everyone else, we were able to still provide services through internet streaming and online helping people as we could and connecting with people in the way that we did. And then in our Catholic schools, when the COVID was lifted in terms of what was required in terms of shutdown, our Catholic schools were able to open and have children in the classrooms when the public schools weren't for over a whole year without our having to close down or any of our schools without having an outbreak of COVID, because of all the good work that they did. So I'm very proud of that. And then when you look at some of our churches, they're starting to grow again. The Cathedral Church where I celebrate a lot of times, there are more people coming to the cathedral now than there were pre-COVID. And it's a very diverse community, with people from the Congo, from Burundi, from Vietnam, and then a lot of the local families that are coming back. The churches that have been consolidated and I'm very proud of that. And I'm also very proud of my staff. I mean, the people that I've hired, the people that I work with, they're just, they're just stellar. And the priests are great, too. So those are the things that I take with me and I've always enjoyed being with them and they with me, I think for the most part. You know those are the things I'm proud of. I'm proud of the fact that we still are able to preach the good news of the Catholic Church in a state that's the least religious one in the country.
Christopher Coyne will be formally installed in his new position in Hartford on October 9th. He will become Archbishop of Hartford when the current Archbishop retires in 2024.
A new bishop for the Burlington diocese has yet to be named. A group of priests will select one to serve as diocesan administrator until a new bishop is assigned.
