The Church and the Government have reached an agreement to compensate victims of pedophilia who cannot go to justice, since the vast majority of cases are statute-barred.
The protocol will be signed this Monday at eleven in the morning, as announced on social networks by the Ombudsman, Ángel Gabilondo. Ten days ago, when there was already an agreement, the ecclesiastical hierarchy took a step back and resisted sealing the agreement, as they planned to do that same week. Sources familiar with the process then indicated that there was a discrepancy in the amounts that should be paid and also over whether the Ombudsman is competent to review the compensation that the Church has already paid internally, which, according to the victims’ associations, have been, on many occasions, “ridiculous and humiliating.” The protocol will mark the steps on how to execute the procedures to request and pay for said repairs.
On January 8, the Church agreed to take charge of reparations to victims of abuse under the supervision of the State. That day, the president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), Archbishop Luis Argüello, and the president of the Spanish Conference of Religious (CONFER), Jesús Díaz Sariego, signed an agreement with the Minister of Justice and Presidency, Félix Bolaños, in which they accepted that the Ombudsman would be the body that reviewed each case and established the amounts. The ecclesiastical hierarchy may appeal the defender’s resolutions, but accepted that the body has the last word.
Bolaños assured that morning that both the Executive and the Church would meet with Gabilondo to agree on how to implement the model and that in a month, at the latest, they would sign another agreement again to decide the scale of compensation, the issue that generated the most friction, according to the CEE. The agreement, however, has taken almost three months to reach.
“It is necessary to have a temporary, specialized reparation system with transparent criteria, which guarantees recognition and comprehensive reparation to all victims of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church who can no longer access the jurisdictional route,” contemplates the agreement signed in January, which indicates that victims’ associations will participate in the procedures.
The implementation of the reparation model comes after the constant refusal of the Episcopal Conference to confront the scandal and seven years after EL PAÍS launched an investigation into cases of pedophilia in the Church. The work of this newspaper caused, among other measures, that Congress, in 2022, by an absolute majority, entrusted the Ombudsman with a report on the magnitude of the crimes and a battery of recommendations, including reparations for those affected.
In other European countries, where the State has intervened to compensate victims of abuse in the clergy, the amounts range from a minimum of almost 6,000 euros that the Church of Belgium has paid on average, to 62,245 that the Church of Ireland has paid, where the maximum established was 300,000 euros. The European average is established at 35,000 euros. If this last figure is applied and the count of some 2,000 victims that the bishops recognize in their reports, the possible bill they face is about 70 million. The number of people affected, in any case, is greater than that reported by the EEC. The accounting of this newspaper, the only one in the absence of an official one, computes 2,948 victims and 1,571 accused.
