A five-day auction is set to begin on Thursday designed to sell just over 40 properties belonging to the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.
The auction will be the third in a series of offerings set to raise funds for the archdiocese as a means of paying off a significant slice of a $121.5 million sexual assault settlement.
Some 4 years ago the archdiocese entered Chapter 11 reorganization proceedings responding to claims of sexual assaults by priests over the decades on hundreds of parishioners.
The final auction will see properties located in the counties of Colfax, Rio Arriba, Sandoval, Taos, Torrance, Union, and Valencia up for bid. The properties in question are nearly all unimproved lots, except for the former historic Maxwell Mission in Colfax County.
The proceedings, as conducted by SVN Auction Services of Boynton Beach, Florida, could bring in anywhere between $500,000 to $1 million, on top of the $3 million already raised through the two previous auctions.
Earlier this spring, the Most Reverend John Wester, Archbishop of Santa Fe, released a statement noting that the total settlement amount with be funded by “the archdiocese, the parishes within the diocese, other Catholic entities, and the archdiocese’s insurance carriers.”
By Garry Boulard
