BALTIMORE (MD)
The Daily Record [Baltimore MD]
October 3, 2025
By Ian Round
- Archdiocese offers $33.18M from its own funds for survivor compensation.
- Insurance contributions may add hundreds of millions more.
- Charitable immunity defense could limit the archdiocese’s payout.
- More than 900 abuse victims have filed claims in the bankruptcy case.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore on Friday said it would be willing to pay about $33 million of its own money toward an eventual settlement.
The amount offered by the archdiocese would not represent the entire settlement amount; the amount to be paid by insurance companies is yet to be determined. The archdiocese said in a statement that it believed insurance would add hundreds of millions of dollars.
“While there is still much work to do, I am hopeful this form plan will aid us in ongoing conversations and will allow us to move forward toward a quicker resolution to these proceedings,” Baltimore Archbishop William Lori said in the statement.
“As the court process continues, with every day that passes, the suffering of victim-survivors is prolonged, which is why we must continue to act with urgency until the settlement is reached so that victim-survivors can receive compensation as soon as possible.”
The money for the Survivors Compensation Trust would come from the archdiocese and affiliated Catholic entities, including parishes and schools, totaling $33,184,320, according to the proposed plan of reorganization.
The archdiocese’s offer comes as it has sought to protect its assets through the doctrine of charitable immunity.
That doctrine holds that donors to charities expect their money to support the organization’s mission, not legal expenses. Therefore, it argues, it shouldn’t be required to put any of its own money toward a settlement. While it argues charitable immunity provides an absolute shield for its own assets, its lawyers had said it would voluntarily put some amount forward.
The committee representing victims argued the archdiocese put forward the charitable immunity defense in bad faith. If its assets are immune, the committee argued, it isn’t in debt, and therefore shouldn’t be protected by the bankruptcy process.
The charitable immunity issue, which has prompted an impasse in the settlement negotiations, is scheduled for a trial in December. The church says it will pay the $33 million even if it succeeds on the immunity claim; if it loses, it may have to pay much more.
Victims are scheduled to tell their stories Nov. 5 at U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Baltimore. It’s the third such victim-impact hearing in the bankruptcy case, which is now more than two years old, after two hearings last year. The hearing was originally scheduled for Oct. 6.
The archdiocese declared bankruptcy in 2023, days before the Maryland Child Victims Act took effect. That law ended the statute of limitations for victims to sue the institutions that harbored abusers and entitled them to $1.5 million per occurrence in noneconomic damages if they were abused by a private, non-governmental defendant. (An amendment to the law reduced that to $700,000 this year.)
More than 900 victims have filed claims in the bankruptcy case; the committee believes the exact number of valid, unique claims is 922.
An attorney representing the victims declined to comment.
Correction: an earlier version of this story misstated the date of the next victim-impact hearing. It was rescheduled this week to Nov. 5.