Chapels on the Auction Block

Last year the man tried to hang himself and ended up in a coma for eight days. He has never been able hold a job or maintain a relationship, he said. He recoils at any unexpected touch.

"I will never get over it," he said.

As a young priest in the 1960s, Bennett enticed altar boys by roaring around on a motorcycle, starting a Boy Scout troop and inviting them to his cabin to swim or ride a Skidoo, akin to a snowmobile. The boys did not tell their parents or guardians that he also took them into his bed.

"If I told my grandparents, who raised me, that I was being abused by the priest, they would have smacked me for lying," Randy Johnston, 48, the only victim publicly identified, said in a telephone interview from Labrador City, Newfoundland.

Church officials testified that they learned in 1979 that Bennett was abusing children, but their response was to transfer him to a more remote parish, St. Bernard's, where the list of his victims grew for another decade.

"The church just pushed the problem on," according to a 52-year-old Stephenville man whose identity is also protected by court order. He said he reported Bennett's abuse to other priests. The man went on to a successful business career and marriage, but he said the ordeal still haunts him.

"I think about it every day," he said. "And I never wanted to have kids because of it. That's my biggest regret."

The ugly secret finally spilled into the open in 1989. Bennett was arrested, pleaded guilty and served four years in prison. Meanwhile, Greg Stack, an attorney in St. John's, the Newfoundland provincial capital, filed suit on behalf of three dozen victims in 1991.

But the church "fought it all the way," Stack said, unsuccessfully appealing to the Supreme Court to avoid liability. Privately, church officials said lawyers for insurance companies dragged out the case. The diocese has yet to find out if -- and how much -- its insurers will pay.

Crosby, 55, came to Newfoundland in 2003, hoping to end the lawsuits hanging over the diocese. He offered the first public apology for the abuses, met with victims and spoke to the news media.

Now, he says, he will be scraping to find money for the settlement. He already has taken $1.4 million in savings -- earned from activities ranging from land investments to Sunday bake sales -- from the 19 parishes in his diocese. He hopes to raise an additional $4.5 million to save the larger churches and most active halls.

Still, Crosby estimates that 100 of 150 properties will have to be sold. Auctioning off the cemeteries "would be a bit much," he said. But his harbor-view office will go, and he has already sold the Bishop's House in the town of Corner Brook.

At Sunday services last month, priests read a letter from Crosby and a list of which properties the parishes would try to buy back from the diocese. In congregations strung along nearly 500 miles, stunned parishioners heard the fate of their churches. Some were relieved.

"We want to get it over with so we can start rebuilding," said the Rev. Maurice O'Quinn, whose church serves most of Stephenville, a tidy town of 8,000.

Others were furious.

"It went from shock to raw anger," said the Rev. Terry Boland, another parish priest.

Crosby admits the settlement is forcing him to make overdue decisions to close churches that already are emptying from declining populations and fewer, aging clergy.

In Piccadilly, Alice Walsh, 76, a nun who has presided for 12 years over bingo and baptisms for her community of 1,200. Walsh said she broke down as she read the properties to be sold: her church, the hall for catechism classes, even the convent house.

"They are devastated," Walsh said of members of her congregation. If the church closes, her parishioners will have to drive 20 minutes to the nearest church. But many are too poor to own a car or too old to drive.

Neil Tourout, 60, recalled that his father helped build the first church at Piccadilly out of plywood salvaged from a former U.S. military base at Stephenville.

"One man devoured everything," he said with disgust.

To the astonishment of some, that man -- Bennett, now 72 -- moved back to a small house near Stephenville after his prison term and began attending Mass. His victims encountered him in the supermarket. He never expressed remorse, they say. Bennett has given no interviews since his release.

But the possible loss of the churches has rekindled passions. There were rumors of threats to Bennett, of midnight prowlers banging on his door.

"It was a tough place for him to be, even dangerous," said O'Quinn. Last week, he said, Bennett finally left Newfoundland, leaving behind his church and his victims in turmoil. He declined to say where Bennett went.