Catholic school in Mississippi Delta closing after 70 years

GREENWOOD, Miss. (AP) — A Catholic elementary school that primarily serves Black and Hispanic families in the Mississippi Delta is closing after more than 70 years, following a sex abuse scandal, declining enrollment and a steep decrease in donations.

St. Francis of Assisi School in Greenwood notified teachers and families Friday that it will close at the end of this week, the Greenwood Commonwealth reported.

It joins more than 200 other Catholic schools in the U.S. that have closed permanently during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the National Catholic Educational Association.

The school in Greenwood was founded in 1951 and is run by the Franciscan Friars of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Province, a Wisconsin-based religious community that opened a mission in an impoverished part of Mississippi.

In recent years, the school in Greenwood has been tarnished by a clergy sex abuse scandal dating back to the 1990s. Paul West, a former friar who was a teacher and principal, was convicted in April of abusing a former student at the school. The Mississippi attorney general's office later dropped a second set of charges against West in the abuse of another student as the 62-year-old former friar began a 45-year prison sentence.

Franciscan officials have come under criticism for how they responded at the time the sexual abuse occurred and more recently how they handled settlements with the Black victims, who received much less than Catholic sex abuse survivors have typically received since the church’s abuse scandal erupted in the U.S. in 2002.

The Rev. James Gannon, the provincial minister of the Assumption Province, told The Associated Press in 2019 that settlements with two Black victims abused by West were less than generous but that the amounts had...