PARIS —
France’s Catholic Church agreed on Monday to financially compensate intercourse abuse victims in what the president of the nation’s Bishop Convention hailed as a “decisive step.”
Convention President Eric de Moulins-Beaufort stated in a speech that the Church has acknowledged its “institutional accountability” and determined to go “on a path of recognition and reparation that paves the best way for victims to get the opportunity of a mediation and a compensation.”
The Bishops Convention held its annual assembly a month after a report revealed large-scale youngster intercourse abuse throughout the French Catholic Church.
The examine launched by an impartial fee estimated that some 330,000 youngsters have been sexually abused over 70 years by monks or different church-related figures.
“We felt disgust and horror inside us after we realized how a lot struggling so many individuals had lived and have been nonetheless dwelling,” Moulins-Beaufort stated.
The bishops acknowledged the church’s accountability that means monetary compensation as a result of the fee “strongly advised that path” but in addition as a result of “worshippers filled with disgrace have been anticipating it from us,” he stated.
Moulins-Beaufort didn’t present particulars concerning the quantity of the compensation and the way the church intends to pay.
The report revealed final month described “systemic” coverup of abuses by the Catholic Church, and urged the church to respect the rule of regulation in France.
It stated the tally of 330,000 victims consists of an estimated 216,000 individuals abused by monks and different clerics, and the remaining by church figures reminiscent of Scout leaders and camp counselors. The estimates have been based mostly on a broader analysis by France’s Nationwide Institute of Well being and Medical Analysis into sexual abuse of youngsters within the nation.
France is a historically Roman Catholic nation, however adheres to a strict type of secularism in public life based mostly on a 1905 regulation separating church and state.
