MIAMI (FL)
Miami Herald
BY JAY WEAVER
jweaver@herald.com
The Archdiocese of Miami says it paid $5.2 million last year to victims of alleged sexual abuse by priests to settle dozens of negligence lawsuits -- more than double its payouts during the previous 37 years.
The archdiocese has settled 31 of the 35 suits, Archbishop John Favalora wrote in a four-page special section recently published in The Florida Catholic newspaper. All of those suits were filed since the nationwide clergy sex abuse scandal erupted in 2002.
''As I told all Catholics earlier this year [2004], this decision was made as prudent exercise of my stewardship of the archdiocese and in light of the inability of those lawsuits to ascertain if the alleged abuse actually took place,'' Favalora wrote in the special section, entitled Protecting God's Children.
Church officials insisted that no funds collected at weekly Masses, in donations from parishioners or from the annual Archbishop's Charity Drive were used for the settlements. Officials said all the money came from an in-house insurance program.
''It's all coming from insurance money,'' archdiocese spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta said Monday. ``We pay premiums to private insurers on our insurance policies that cover all of these areas, from workmen's compensation to property damage to sexual-misconduct claims.''
Posted by kshaw at February 1, 2005 06:20 AM