SPAIN’S Roman Catholic bishops and the government signed a deal on Monday over compensating victims of sexual abuse by clergy members who have died or whose possible crimes are too old to be prosecuted.
In January, the bishops agreed to let the country’s ombudsman have the final say in the church’s compensation of such victims.
The government and the bishops signed the accord on Monday detailing how the new compensation system would work, as from April 15.
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The agreement, which envisages a one-year window for claims, marks a rare concession by the Catholic hierarchy.
It’s aimed at resolving disagreements between government and church authorities over reparations after victims criticised the church’s own compensation proposal.
Archbishop Luis Arguello, the president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, said the text will not include number amounts for the compensation that sexual abuse victims could receive.
“We wanted to exclude references to scales and quantities; that’s not what this is about,” Arguello stated.
“We’ve planned for the teams to start working on how to do it, but the text doesn’t establish a range or a specific amount.”
Justice Minister, Felix Bolaños, said the system would evaluate reparations case by case, based on factors like severity, the victim’s age and the recurrence of the abuse.
“Criteria are set to arrive at fair compensation, which should not be determined by a single figure,” Bolaños commented.
Under the new agreement, victims can approach the Justice Ministry with their initial petition.
The ministry will pass it on to the ombudsman, Angel Gabliondo Pujol, who will study it and propose a compensation package that the church’s committee will then assess.
If no agreement can be reached with the church and the victim, the case will go to a joint committee with representatives of the church, the ombudsman’s office and victims’ associations.
If that committee can’t agree, the ombudsman’s decision will stand.
Felix Bolaños described the agreement as a world first in which ‘the state has the final say and the church pays the reparations due to each victim’.
Inquiries suggest that an estimated 200,000 children were abused.
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