Spain and the Catholic Church agree to a new system to compensate victims of clergy sexual abuse, addressing a historical \u2018moral debt\u2019.<\/p>\n
MADRID<\/strong>: The Spanish government and the Catholic Church have signed a landmark agreement to compensate victims of sexual abuse by clergy.<\/p>\n Justice Minister Felix Bolanos described the accord as a way to settle a historical \u201cmoral debt\u201d owed to victims.<\/p>\n \u201cFor decades there has been silence, concealment, a moral harm often impossible to repair,\u201d Bolanos told a news conference.<\/p>\n \u201cThis agreement allows us to settle a historical moral debt we owed to the victims of abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n The new system will provide reparations to victims unable to pursue legal action, often due to statutes of limitations.<\/p>\n It marks the first time the Church in Spain will fund such reparations, having previously resisted participation.<\/p>\n Victims will submit complaints to the state ombudsman\u2019s office, which will then propose reparations.<\/p>\n These may include financial, moral, psychological, restorative, or combined measures.<\/p>\n If either the victim or the Church rejects the proposal, a mixed commission will review it.<\/p>\n This commission will include representatives from the Church, the government, and victims.<\/p>\n Failing an agreement at that stage, the ombudsman\u2019s recommendation will prevail.<\/p>\n Luis Arguello, president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), called the agreement \u201canother step along the path we have been pursuing for years\u201d.<\/p>\n He noted the Church already had internal mechanisms to compensate victims.<\/p>\n Bolanos credited the Vatican with providing \u201ca necessary and essential impetus\u201d for the deal.<\/p>\n He had previously discussed the matter with the late Pope Francis and Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin.<\/p>\n The move follows a damning 2023 report by Spain\u2019s ombudsman.<\/p>\n It found more than 200,000 minors had suffered sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy since 1940.<\/p>\n That number could rise to 400,000 if abuse by laypersons in religious settings is included.<\/p>\n The Church\u2019s own records list 1,057 \u201cregistered cases\u201d, with 358 deemed \u201cproven\u201d or \u201ccredible\u201d.<\/p>\n Unlike in other nations, clerical abuse allegations in Spain only recently started to gain significant traction.<\/p>\n This has led to accusations by survivors of stonewalling by Church authorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spain and the Catholic Church agree to a new system to compensate victims of clergy sexual abuse, addressing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[8521,20363,904,2000,299,104,43897],"class_list":{"0":"post-682518","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-abuse","9":"tag-church","10":"tag-compensation","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-spain","14":"tag-victims"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115860272722390786","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}