PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
May 5, 2020
By Harold Brubaker
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia said Tuesday that it expects to pay $126 million to sexual-abuse victims under a reparations program announced in 2018.
The archdiocese said its Independent Reconciliation and Reparations Program has received a total of 615 claims, and had settled 208 of them for $43.8 million as of April 22. That averages out to about $211,000 per claim, which is in line with what other dioceses have been paying under similar programs.
The archdiocese said it still has $20 million on hand to pay claims and will raise the rest of the money through loans or property sales. The diocese made the $126 million estimate as part of an audited financial statement for the year ending June 30, 2019.
“I deeply regret the pain and suffering of survivors and any decisions that failed to protect them,” Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez wrote to parishioners in a letter Tuesday. “The pain and damage are profound.”
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