MADRID (SPAIN)
Barron's [New York NY]
February 27, 2025
By AFP
Spain’s Catholic Church, long criticised for lacking transparency about its handling of sexual abuse committed on its watch, on Thursday said its contested scheme to compensate victims had started.
Pressure on the Spanish Church to compensate victims amplified after a damning 2023 report estimated that Roman Catholic clergy and lay people sexually abused more than 400,000 minors since 1940.
The Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), which groups the country’s leading bishops, presented its own compensation plan last year but without providing details on when or how it would be implemented.
CEE secretary general Francisco Cesar Garcia Magan told reporters the plan “is working… cases presented by congregations, by dioceses or directly by victims are being handled”.
But he was unable to reveal how much had been paid out to victims, saying the commission responsible for handling the claims “works independently”.
The commission would report on its work after a year of activity, and “until then, there will be no more information”, Garcia Magan said.
Spanish media reported the body had begun its work towards the end of 2024.
Victims’ groups have in the past denounced the Church’s lack of transparency, its failure to offer any reparations and their exclusion from the design of the scheme.
Last year, leftist government approved a plan to implement the 2023 report’s recommendations, including the creation of a state compensation fund.
But the Church ruled out taking part if such a fund only compensated victims of ecclesiastical abuse and not victims of sexual abuse in any setting, later setting up its own plan.
The government expressed its opposition to the Church creating a “unilateral system” of reparations.
Garcia Magan said negotiations with the government on a state compensation fund were continuing.
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