Spain’s Catholic bishops and the government signed paperwork Monday for a new compensation system for victims of sexual abuse by clergy members, including cases where offenders have died or where possible crimes are too old for prosecution. The deal, which takes effect April 15, places the Spanish state in the process for reparations and follows earlier friction between the country’s left-wing government and church authorities over how victims should be compensated.
The agreement also creates a one-year window for victims to bring claims. It is designed to resolve disagreements that emerged after victims criticized an earlier proposal from church authorities to handle reparations internally, and it builds on an understanding reached in January that Spain’s ombudsman would have the final say in the church’s compensation process for those cases.
Archbishop Luis Argüello, president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, said the agreement’s wording would not include compensation amounts or explicit ranges. “We wanted to exclude references to scales and quantities; that’s not what this is about,” Argüello said. “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.”
Bolaños said the state-involved system would evaluate reparations case by case. On Monday, he said the criteria are set to reach “fair compensation,” and that the payment should not be determined by a single figure. “Criteria are set to arrive at fair compensation, which should not be determined by a single figure,” Bolaños said.
The structure of the process begins with victims approaching Spain’s Justice Ministry with their initial petition. The ministry then passes the claim to the ombudsman, who will study it and propose a compensation package that the church’s committee will assess.
If the church and the victim do not reach agreement, the case moves to a joint committee with representatives of the church, the ombudsman’s office and victims’ associations. If that committee cannot agree, Bolaños said the ombudsman’s decision will stand.
The government’s involvement is part of what makes the Spanish arrangement unusual compared with other Western European efforts that have created compensation schemes run by churches or by independent experts. In Spain, the process is also occurring as the country has begun to confront a decades-long legacy of abuse by priests and alleged cover-up by generations of bishops and religious superiors, following reporting by El País that helped propel wider scrutiny.
Spain’s Parliament tasked the ombudsman with investigating the issue, and in 2023 the ombudsman delivered a report that investigated 487 known abuse cases and included a survey projecting the number of possible victims could reach the hundreds of thousands. The bishops rejected that estimate, saying their own investigation had found 728 sexual abusers in the church since 1945, and that most alleged crimes took place before 1990, with 60% of aggressors now dead.
On Monday, Bolaños called the arrangement a “world first,” saying it ensures “the state has the final say and the church pays the reparations due to each victim.”