The nation’s largest archdiocese (the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles) recently agreed to pay a record $880 million to 1,353 survivors of horrific sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.
“It’s almost 40 years since Catholic attorney and advocate Rev. Thomas Doyle first warned bishops back in 1987 that the Catholic Church’s reckless mishandling of abuse accusations made it appear to be ‘an organization preaching morality and providing sanctuary to perverts,’” comments Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president, who authored one of the first books on clergy sexual abuse, published by FFRF in 1987.
“It’s not just the extent of Catholic crimes against children and minors, but the continuing cover-ups that makes this so egregious,” Gaylor adds. “Yes, there is some justice in this settlement for some, but it shouldn’t have taken a quarter-century of litigation.”
Plaintiffs’ attorney Morgan Stewart notes: “These survivors have suffered for decades in the aftermath of the abuse.” Stewart remarks that dozens of the survivors have died, others aging. “Many of those with knowledge of the abuse within the church are [dead or dying] too. It was time to get this resolved.”
This payout, the highest single payout by a diocese, brings the cumulative total of the LA Archdiocese to over $1.5 billion. The archdiocese broke its own record from 2007, when it paid $660 million in lawsuits by 508 people, according to Terry McKiernan of BishopAccountability.org. A 2019 law opened a three-year window for revival of claims previously barred by statutes of limitation.
Archbishop José Gomez, who professed being “sorry … from the bottom of my heart,” said the new settlement would be paid through reserves, investments and loans, along with other archdiocesan assets and payments that will be made by religious orders and others named in the litigation. He said donations to parishes, schools and specific mission campaigns would not be used.
The archdiocese has over 4 million Catholics and nearly 300 parishes.
“There are a lot more dominoes in California to come down,” McKiernan says, referring to other dioceses that have not settled or have protected themselves by filing for bankruptcy.
FFRF’s newspaper, Freethought Today, will continue to limit its coverage of “black collar crimes” to only two tabloid-sized pages a month, although it could fill more. Freethought Today has been chronicling such crimes, in no way limited to Catholic priests, since the late 1980s.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters across the country, including over 5,000 members and two chapters (the Greater Sacramento Chapter and the San Francisco Bay Chapter) in California. Its purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
