A plan to provide financial support and reparations to victims of sexual abuse by Catholic Church members was adopted by Spain on Tuesday.
It further declared that a public gesture of recognition for the impacted individuals and their families would be celebrated in the future.
Félix Bolaños, the Minister of Presidency and Justice, stated that the strategy was developed based on suggestions made in a report that Spain’s Ombudsman released last year. According to that assessment, it was estimated that 440,000 adults in Spain may have been sexually abused by members of the church, with clergy accounting for about half of those cases.
According to Bolaños, the church would cover the cost of the settlement.
However, the Bishops Conference of Spain condemned the initiative in a statement on Tuesday, claiming that it discriminated against victims who were not affiliated with a church.
The amount and timing of the financial compensation were not disclosed. No deadline was established for any kind of public acknowledgement.
Making it a key component of government policy, Bolaños said the initiative aimed to “settle a debt with those victims who for decades were forgotten by everyone and now our democracy aims to repair” that.
Following the Ombudsman’s investigation and years of essentially ignoring the problem, Spain’s bishops expressed regret for the abuses carried out by church members, although they denied that the number of victims involving the church was inflated. The church was charged with pervasive negligence in that report.
According to Bolaños, the government intends to implement the plan in conjunction with the church over the course of the following four years.
The project would strengthen prevention supervision in schools and provide free legal aid to all victims of sexual abuse.
Some independent groups have conducted their own investigations into clergy sex abuse, but only a few nations have had parliamentary or government-initiated inquiries into the issue.
