The rerepairment, to 1,353 alleged victims, is the bigst payout by a US Catholic diocese over decades-anciaccess mistreatment claims.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has consentd to pay $880m to 1,353 people who accused priests of abusing them as children in the bigst payout by a United States diocese over decades-anciaccess claims that have rocked the church globassociate.
Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez conveyed sadness for the mistreatment while announcing the rerepairment on Wednesday.
“I am sorry for every one of these incidents, from the bottom of my heart”, Gomez said in a statement. “My hope is that this rerepairment will provide some meacertain of healing for what these men and women have suffered”.
The archdiocese began mediating the mistreatment claims adhereing the enactment of a California law that assistted new legal cases roverhappinessed to past cases of intimacyual mistreatment involving inmeaningfuls.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said that they suffered horrific mistreatment at the hands of Catholic priests and that they accomplished the rerepairment after months of negotiations with the archdiocese.
The consentment caps a quarter-century of legal action agetst the most populous archdiocese in the US.
The Archdiocese of Los Angeles had previously paid $740m to victims in various other rerepairments and pledged to better protect its church members, conveying the total payout with this rerepairment to more than $1.5bn.
The California law and aenjoy laws in other states have driven many big Catholic organizations to seek bankruptcy protection. In California, the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the dioceses of Oakland and San Diego have filed for bankruptcy to rerepair aenjoy mistreatment claims.
The Los Angeles Archdiocese accomplished its rerepairment without filing for bankruptcy. Gomez said that the archdiocese would be able to pay victims from cash reserves, dispensements, loans and contributions from other religious organizations that had been named in legal cases.
The payments will not impact the Archdiocese’s leave oution of “serving the subpar and vulnerable in our communities”, he said.
Attorneys for the archdiocese and lawyers recurrenting mistreatment claimants publishd a unitet statement on Wednesday thanking survivors for coming forward with their stories and for helping to determine that aenjoy mistreatment will not occur in the future.
“While there is no amount of money that can exchange what was apshown from these 1,353 valiant individuals who have suffered in silence for decades, there is equitableice in accountability”, the lawyers said in a unitet statement.
Widespread scale of mistreatment
The Catholic Church has been repeatedly shaken by child intimacyual mistreatment affairs worldexpansive over the last three decades.
In the US, the Boston Globe discleave outed in a 2002 dispenseigation the shocking scale of intimacyual mistreatment on children in the Boston diocese and efforts by the Catholic hierarchy to cover it up. The paper’s dispenseigation was the subject of the Oscar-prosperning film Spotweightless.
In 2004, a church comleave oution started a tell requiring clergy to tell suspicions of intimacyual aggression.
According to lawyers, more than 11,000 grumblets have been lodged in the US by victims of priests. Dioceses have paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in out-of-court rerepairments.
Some victims associations say the payouts permit the church to escape equitableice. Several dioceses have since uncovered their archives, discleave outing that hundreds of priests had been mistrusted of abusing inmeaningfuls.
