The Catholic Church has been getting its pants sued off for years.

The Catholic Church has been getting its pants sued off for years. But the local stakes have risen recently, as the scandal has shifted to what took place decades ago at Jesuit-run boarding schools for Indian children. While a half-dozen dioceses have previously declared bankruptcy, now an entire order–the Jesuits–has been targeted, and the financial claims could touch Seattle U and Gonzaga.For this week’s cover story, Nina Shapiro traveled to the Colville Indian Reservation in a desolate stretch of Northeastern Washington, where she found tribal members with bitter memories and some with mixed feelings about the lawsuits. She also recounts in detail the way that the legal campaign against the church has become a sophisticated and lucrative industry, led in Washington state by a Seattle plaintiffs’ attorney who describes himself as “a cash-and-carry kind of guy.”