Los Angeles, Calif., Nov 21, 2007 / 16:02 pm
The pending closure of a Catholic high school in Los Angeles has driven parents to fundraising activity and has raised allegations that the school is only being sold to cover lawsuit settlements in child abuse cases, the California Catholic reports.
Last Saturday about 200 parents, students, and alumni of the 53-year-old Daniel Murphy High School marched from Pershing Square to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. They carried signs reading “Don’t Make the Children Pay” and “No More Victims.”
In October the Archdiocese of Los Angeles announced it would close the school, citing "severe financial challenges" and a decline in the student population.
Though the archdiocese said “efforts to increase student enrollment over the past ten years” had failed, a parent's letter to Pope Benedict XVI, received by the California Catholic Daily, claimed that the archdiocese has in the past capped freshman enrollment. The letter claimed that “there has been no official Archdiocese involvement with enrollment at Daniel Murphy,” and said parents did not know about the school's financial trouble or its subsidies from the archdiocese until the announcement that the school would close.