PARIS (FRANCE)
Associated Press
February 22, 2019
Still struggling to come to terms with their share of responsibility in the clerical sex abuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church, France’s bishops have agreed to award financial compensation to victims whose cases fall outside of the country’s statute of limitations.
“We have agreed in principle to make a financial gesture,” Vincent Neymon, head of communications for the French bishops’conference, told the Associated Press. He said he hoped to have a system for paying victims in place in less than a year.
France has not been immune to the scandal that has prompted a credibility crisis for the Catholic hierarchy, and that is the topic of a summit at the Vatican this week on preventing sex abuse and prosecuting pedophile priests.
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