The archdiocese responded by saying the allegations brought by the plaintiff, Argent Institutional Trust Co, are baseless.
“The allegations made by Argent in their lawsuit are based on third hand reports and assumptions with no facts to substantiate them,” a church spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
The lawsuit contains the most direct allegations of wrongdoing leveled against Aymond in a court filing to date, and it comes not from any abuse survivor – but instead from attorneys representing investors who bought $41m in church bond debt back in 2017.
Argent is the bond trustee and filed the lawsuit on Tuesday against the archdiocese, Aymond, vicar general Pat Williams and 104 archdiocesan churches and agencies.
Argent alleges Aymond, Williams and church affiliates they oversee helped “conceal the extent of the abuse” before investors agreed to purchase the church’s bond debt in 2017.
The lawsuit notes that Aymond disclosed a list of 57 credibly accused clergy in 2018 but has since added at least 22 names to the list. In multiple instances, those additions followed reporting from WWL Louisiana and a journalist now at the Guardian – the station’s reporting partner – that highlighted certain clergymen who appeared to fit the criteria for inclusion but had been omitted.
Argent cites reporting by the Guardian and WWL in 2023 and 2024 to bolster its claims that Aymond and Williams “knew for years that employees of some or all of the [church affiliates] had sexually abused children and other vulnerable individuals”.
That includes a 2023 story about a leaked memo stating that there were 310 priests, deacons and other church employees named as abusers in claims at the center of the federal chapter 11 bankruptcy protection case filed by the archdiocese three years earlier – but only a quarter of them made it on Aymond’s official list.
It also includes WWL and the Guardian’s coverage of a Louisiana state police search warrant served against the archdiocese, stating there was probable cause to believe the church knew about widespread abuse for decades and it was “covered up and not reported to law enforcement”.
The lawsuit also cites the news outlets’ 2024 report about secret church files exposed in a civil lawsuit against retired priest Lawrence Hecker, who shortly before dying pleaded guilty to kidnapping and raping an underage boy.
The story quoted previously hidden emails notifying Aymond of Hecker’s long history of abuse in 2011, seven years before the archbishop first notified the public about it.
In July, the archdiocese and a committee of abuse survivors proposed a plan to settle the bankruptcy, and about 660 survivors will have a chance to vote to approve or reject the plan by 29 October.
The plan offers survivors between $180m and $235m, estimated to be about a sixth of the midpoint estimate of what the claims are worth. Under the settlement, the church has stopped paying interest to bondholders, which Argent alleges would also significantly reduce payments to the church’s investors by about $9.3m. That led Argent to accuse the archdiocese of “the definition of securities fraud” in open court. Attorneys for the church called that an “extreme stretch”.
While the proposed bankruptcy settlement would allegedly shortchange some church creditors, the plan would guarantee full retirement pension benefits to all priests who have not been identified by the church or the court as abusers, including Aymond and Williams. Church financial records estimate total priest pension obligations at $55m.
The proposed settlement also sets aside investment accounts held by the church’s affiliates worth at least $149m, making sure they essentially “pass through” the bankruptcy as if it never happened.
Argent’s lawsuit asks bankruptcy judge Meredith Grabill to order the church and its affiliates to pay the bondholders in full – before any priests can collect retirement benefits and before the parishes and other church affiliates can cash in their investments.
Argent alleges Aymond and Williams, who serve as officers of every church affiliate, failed to report all known cases of abuse to law enforcement or child protective services as required by a 1993 church policy. Therefore, Argent alleges, the pair should forfeit their rights to collect benefits before the bondholders.
In November, Aymond turned 75 and, as with all Catholic bishops, was required by church law to submit his retirement letter to the Vatican. Neither then pope Francis nor the late pontiff’s successor, Pope Leo XIV, has accepted Aymond’s retirement.
Aymond is expected to stay in his post until the bankruptcy case is fully settled.