survivors

The settlement is the second-largest after an $880m ​deal reached by the Archdiocese of Los ​Angeles in 2024.

The Archdiocese of New York has agreed to pay more than $800m to settle the legal claims of about 1,300 survivors of sexual abuse by clergy.

New York Archbishop Ronald Hicks said on Saturday that the settlement will be formally signed on November 6 after an agreement with the plaintiffs and their lawyers.

“We are on the verge of being able to, please God, bring some measure of healing and reconciliation to all victim-survivors,” he wrote in an email sent to his priests and shared by the archdiocese’s news outlet.

“This agreement will also allow the archdiocese to turn its full attention once again to its mission of preaching the Gospel, healing the sick, caring for the poor and needy, welcoming the stranger, and educating our children,” he added.

According to The New York Times, which broke the story, each of the approximately 1,300 survivors will receive at least $250,000 from the Archdiocese of New York and potentially more depending on the severity of the abuse suffered.

The settlement is the second-largest of its kind after an $880m deal reached by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2024.

“The unanimous agreement of survivors who filed claims against the Archdiocese of New York marks a powerful moment in the pursuit of justice,” Jeff Anderson, a lawyer representing people who filed more than 1,000 claims against the Catholic Church in New York state, said in a statement.

“Through their courage, sacrifice, and determination, survivors have helped bring about a reckoning and a meaningful step toward accountability.”

Scandals and settlements

The agreement marks the end of years of negotiations with lawyers representing the plaintiffs, as the Catholic Church in the United States has been mired in sexual abuse scandals since the early 2000s.

In the 2000s, media investigations revealed that Catholic priests in the US had committed sexual abuse against thousands of children over several decades, and that church leaders had often covered up these cases or transferred the offending priests instead of reporting them to civil authorities.

Dioceses across the country have had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, and programmes have been created to compensate survivors without going to trial.

In June, the Archdiocese of San Francisco announced it had reached an agreement to pay $395m to about 530 survivors of sexual abuse committed by its clergy to settle their lawsuits.

Head of the Roman Catholic Church holds ’emotional’ two-hour meeting with seven abuse victims in French town of Lourdes.

Pope Leo XIV has thanked a group of survivors of clerical abuse “for their painful testimony” and “reaffirmed his commitment” to end harm by Catholic priests at a meeting in southwestern France, the Vatican said.

The leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics is on a four-day visit to France.

On Sunday, the pontiff visited the pilgrimage town of Lourdes, where he privately met seven survivors of child abuse, now adults, and promised to further efforts to reform the Church in the wake of the global sexual abuse scandal.

The group said in a later news conference that the meeting was emotional and touching.

“When he saw the state I was in, he took me into his arms,” survivor Jean-Marie Delbos said, adding, “It was an extraordinary moment.”

The 80-year-old was abused as a pupil at the nearby boarding school of Notre-Dame de Betharram, where staff have been accused of physical and sexual abuse over several decades.

The survivors said they felt heard and that they were impressed by Leo’s compassion and knowledge of their individual cases.

But they hoped the words would be accompanied by action.

Jerome Guillement, who has written about a priest abusing him as a teenager, said at the news conference that the pope understood the “systemic” nature of sexual abuse in the Church.

“From his point of view, the perpetrators are individuals, but what allows it to continue is the systemic dimension within the institution,” he said.

“He certainly believes that the Church has done a great deal in France, but he also believes that the Church in France still has a tremendous amount left to do.”

Local leaders hoped Leo’s visit would help repair the Church’s standing after a 2021 independent inquiry found that some 330,000 French children had been abused by Catholic clergy and lay leaders over seven decades.

The pope told an estimated 150,000 people gathered for a Mass in a field near the famed Catholic shrine in Lourdes earlier on Sunday that the Church must have the courage to face its past.

Veronique Garnier, another survivor who met with the pontiff, said she had found the Mass, in which Leo referred to abuse without directly apologising for it, troubling and wondered why she had attended.

But she said she was encouraged by her meeting with Leo.

“I do indeed believe there is hope – hope that there can be change and truly listening to us at a deep level, rather than just superficially with beautiful words that are never followed by any real action,” she said.

Leo also spoke about the abuse scandals in a closed-door meeting with French bishops on Sunday, according to a Vatican-provided text.

He was expected to visit the northeastern city of Metz on Monday before returning to Rome the same day.