The archdiocese agreed to pay 600 abuse survivors a $305m settlement before the Vatican confirmed Aymond’s exit
Pope Leo XIV accepted the resignation of the Roman Catholic archbishop of New Orleans, Gregory Aymond, on Wednesday – one day after the archbishop concluded a series of meetings with survivors of a clergy molestation scandal that has embroiled the city’s church leadership for years.
Aymond had submitted his resignation to global Catholic church leaders at the Vatican as he was required when he turned 75 in November 2024. But the Vatican didn’t immediately accept it, plotting for Aymond to remain in position until the New Orleans archdiocese settled a federal bankruptcy protection case that it filed in the spring of 2020 amid the continuing fallout of the decades-old worldwide clerical abuse crisis.
In December, the archdiocese and its insurers agreed to pay about $305m to roughly 600 abuse survivors ensnared in the bankruptcy. One non-montary term in that settlement required Aymond to gather with groups of clergy abuse survivors, and he held such meetings daily across the New Orleans area from 6 February through Tuesday.
The US Catholic Conference of Bishops and the New Orleans archdiocese then announced Wednesday that the Vatican had accepted Aymond’s resignation. His successor is James Checchio, the former bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey, who had been appointed to administer alongside Aymond in New Orleans before eventually taking over for him.
