Spain and Catholic Bishops Approve Joint Reparations Program for Historic Clergy Abuse Claims Ahead of Papal Visit

Spain approved a reparations program this year for victims of sexual abuse by clergy members who have died and whose alleged crimes are too old to prosecute. The Spanish bishops conference and Spain’s government approved the program months before Pope Leo XIV’s planned visit starting Saturday, June 6, 2026, to the nation of 50 million people.

The program gives the government the final word on payouts and allows victims one year to apply.

Paula Alonso-Pimentel, now in her late 50s, is among those seeking compensation. In the 1970s she was sent for catechism at age 8 to a religious school in Valladolid, where she says a Marist priest sexually abused her for a year in the school’s vestibule, placing her on his knees and lifting her skirt as students passed in and out.

More than 50 years later, she wrote to the Marist order after Pope Francis convened a global summit on clerical abuse in 2019, received only the priest’s name, and later cut off contact.

The new system calls for Spain’s ombudsman to review each case through an independent team of experts and propose compensation that may be symbolic, psychological or economic. If the church and victim do not agree, the case moves to a joint committee with representatives from the church, the ombudsman’s office and victims groups. If that committee cannot agree, the ombudsman has the final word.

So far, 420 people have applied. The program follows years of controversy that began when newspaper El País created a database of clergy sexual abuse cases in 2018. In 2023 Spain’s ombudsman delivered an 800-page report estimating hundreds of thousands of possible victims based on a survey of 8,000 people and examined 487 known cases.

Spain’s bishops rejected the ombudsman’s estimate, reporting that their own investigation had identified 728 sexual abusers within the church since 1945. Most of those crimes occurred before 1990, and 60 percent of the alleged perpetrators are now dead, the bishops conference said. 3 million) to victims.

He added that the bishops do not consider clerical abuse a systemic issue, stating, “We believe that, indeed, human nature is flawed, that it has a propensity for evil, and that it needs a great deal of reconciliation and forgiveness. ” Some victims and advocates remain skeptical.

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of Bishop Accountability, called the protocol “quite fragile” because it has a short time frame and no matrix to establish minimum awards.

Miguel Hurtado, who says a monk named Andreu Soler sexually molested him when he was a 16-year-old Boy Scout at the Montserrat Abbey more than two decades ago, said the monastery initially persuaded his parents not to report the abuse. The Montserrat Abbey acknowledged multiple cases involving Soler in an independent 2019 report.

Alonso-Pimentel said she hopes the new church-state model will be more equitable than the church’s earlier program, which she did not join.

“It must cost them, the Church,” she said.