Business advice: don’t insure the Catholic church. Really, don’t do that.

The Catholic Church’s private insurer spent more than $58 million paying out the victims of sexual abuse last year and the company is being forced to raise fresh capital and liquidate investments to cover a future compensation bill worth at least another $238 million.

Not profitable.

Catholic Church Insurance (CCI) has posted nearly a $250 million loss as it struggles to meet a wave of new claims in the wake of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

More business advice: don’t invest in their stock.

CCI, which insures Catholic parishes, religious institutions, welfare groups, aged care facilities and schools across Australia for incidents of property damage, loss and injury, has also covered compensation and legal costs for sexual abuse committed in many church organisations since 1969.

Whoops.

The ballooning current and anticipated costs mean CCI is moving to liquidate investments, to raise capital to meet what it now expects to be at least $238 million in future sexual abuse payouts.

It also stopped paying dividends and distributions to the Catholic organisations that are shareholders in the non-profit, cutting off an important source of income for some of these entities.

Among its shareholders are the Australian Episcopal Conference of the Roman Catholic Church, archdioceses of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, and the Jesuits, Marists, De La Salle Brothers and Sisters of Mercy.

It was a good racket for a long time but now that all the sexual abuse of children is out in the open…the money is going far far away.

And for the clincher? Most of that money isn’t going to the victims at all, but to…oh you know where it’s going.

The Age and the Herald have previously revealed that only 28 per cent of the $34.27 million the church spent on compensation under the Melbourne Response scheme from 1996 to 2014 went to victims, with the rest spent on legal fees and administrative expenses.

Ave Maria.