Former Crystal Cathedral Member Sues Catholic Diocese for $30 Billion

This guy doesn't care much for Catholics:

A long-time member of the Crystal Cathedral, whose wife is buried at the church's cemetery, has filed a claim seeking $50,000 for two cemetery sites, $5.6 million from founding pastor Robert H. Schuller and $30 billion from the Catholic Church.

David E. Phillippe, of Victorville, argued that Schuller and the Cathedral's board of directors, "that acted at Schuller's bidding," mismanaged the ministry's money and caused the bankruptcy.

The sale of the bankrupt Cathedral to the Catholic Diocese of Orange has "permanently desecrated" the campus, Phillippe wrote in his claim, filed April 2 in federal bankruptcy court.

The transfer in February to the Catholic Church also "defamed, polluted, cursed with moral, ethical cultural, criminal, spiritual and religious indignity" the glass-towered church, its buildings and "the consecrated grounds" of the cemetery, which hold the ashes of his wife, DoraDene Phillippe, he wrote in the claim.

Phillippe is seeking to re-open the bankruptcy plan to allow an amended claim as a creditor.

The plan was confirmed last December and is "now a final, non-appealable order," Nanette Sanders, an attorney for dozens of creditors, wrote in a response filed this week in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

"If you had an objection to the sale to the Catholic Church, you needed to raise your objection at the November confirmation hearings," Sanders wrote in an e-mail to Phillippe May 25. "Your alleged claims against the Pope, the Vatican and the Schullers are not claims in which the bankruptcy estate should be involved."

Phillippe argued in his claim that the Catholic Church is "a known and admitted perpetrator of criminal acts in Orange County and globally." He attached news accounts of sex abuse cases by suspected pedophile priests and documents ordering secrecy in molestation cases.

I don't think the courts are going to look too kindly on this lawsuit.