The Spanish Catholic Church, shaken by a scandal of sexual abuse committed by members of the clergy, agreed this Thursday with the government to compensate victims of abuse whose cases expired or in which the aggressor died.
‘Today we are paying off a debt and bringing justice to the victims. We are moving from decades of silence and oblivion to fair reparation paid by the Church’, said the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, about the agreement signed by his ministry and the Church.
The abuse scandal came to light after an investigation by the newspaper El País in 2021 revealed more than 1,200 alleged cases, echoing similar scandals in the Catholic Church in the United States, Ireland and France.
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A 2023 report by Spain’s Human Rights Advocate estimated hundreds of thousands of victims over decades, based on a survey of 8,000 people. He called for the creation of a state fund and accused the Church of not cooperating and trying to ‘minimize the phenomenon’. More than 700 people have shared their cases with the defender by 2024.
An investigation commissioned by the Spanish Catholic Church identified around 2,000 victims by the end of 2023.
According to the agreement signed this Thursday, the defender will analyze each case and propose compensation — financial, moral, psychological or reparative — based on the victim’s request, said Bolaños.
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Previously, victims could go directly to the Church, but many were reluctant. The Church said this Thursday that it had already paid around 2 million euros to the victims.
The new process is for victims who do not want to go directly to the Church. The reparations proposed by the defender must be agreed upon by both the victim and the Church Assessment Committee.
