Spanish government, bishops at odds over compensation of abuse victims
April 24, 2024
» Continue to this story on Reuters
CWN Editor's Note: Félix Bolaños, the Minister for the Presidency, Justice and Parliamentary Relations in Spain’s Socialist government, has announced the establishment of a government fund to compensate the 440,000 people the government estimates have been abused by priests or laymen in Catholic institutions.
Bolaños stated that he expected the Church in Spain to finance most of the fund; the bishops’ conference countered that “it could not accept a plan that excluded victims of sexual abuse in other organizations,” Reuters reported.
Extrapolating from a survey of 8,000 people, a parliamentary commission announced in October that an estimated 230,000 Spaniards (0.6% of the population) had been abused by priests and that an additional estimated 210,000 (0.5%) had been abused by laity in Catholic institutions.
In December, an audit commissioned by the Spanish bishops, and conducted by a law firm, found that a far smaller number—at least 2,056 minors, most of them male—were abused by Spanish clergy.
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