The president of the Portuguese bishops’ conference confirmed Tuesday that “significant cuts” were made to the recommendations from an independent commission for financial compensation packages to victims of clerical sexual abuse.
On Tuesday The Pillar broke the news that the Portuguese bishops’ conference voted in a February closed-door meeting to make cuts to the amounts proposed by an independent Compensation Determination Commission, which had been formed in 2024 by the bishops’ conference.
But until news reporting was published April 7 on the subject, the bishops’ conference had declined to confirm the cuts, telling The Pillar earlier this month only that “the final amounts attributed were defined in accordance with the procedural regulation, which allowed for a distinction between the technical report and the final decision” and “taking into consideration” the work of the CDC.
The independent commission was composed of seven legal experts,including two judges, along with several lawyers and university law professors.
The Pillar has confirmed that the cuts applied by the bishops slashed tens of thousands of euros from the compensations packages recommended for victims by the commission. According to the Portuguese bishops’ conference, the amounts finally awarded to the victims range from between 9,000 and 45,000 euros — around $10,500 to $52,000.
In a Tuesday afternoon interview with Ecclesia, the official news agency of the Catholic Church in Portugal, bishops’ conference president Bishop José Ornelas confirmed the cuts.
“There was a significant reduction of the value presented by the Compensation Determination Commission. It was considered that, taking into account the reality of the Church in Portugal, Portuguese jurisprudence and the response of other European Churches, we should lower the amount,” the bishop explained.
In a separate interview with Portuguese news agency Lusa, Ornelas stressed that “the Church in Portugal is not rich”, and said that victims in Germany and France received maximum compensations of 50,000 and 60,000 euros [around $57,000 thousand and $69,000 dollars], respectively.”
“I can accept that some might find [the Portuguese compensation packages] too low,” the bishop said, adding that “if anyone prefers to take the issue to court, they can.”
Sources close to the bishops’ conference have told The Pillar that the decision to cut the compensation packages proposed by the CDC caused significant discomfort among its members and other people connected to the process, with some lamenting that a closed-door vote to reduce recommended amounts undercut the bishops’ commitment to transparency.
On Tuesday, Bishop Ornelas, who is bishop of Leiria-Fátima, said he informed the members of the commission personally about the cuts, adding that “they accepted that we were doing our duty. Some agreed more, others less, of course, as with all processes. But we were very open about it.”
The Catholic Church in Portugal will expend a more than 1.6 million euros on compensation for 57 people whose requests have already been validated. Nine cases are still awaiting evaluation.
But The Pillar has confirmed that compensation commission will not be tasked evaluating remaining cases. The bishops’ conference has said that “the outstanding cases will be assessed using the same criteria as those applied to cases that have already been concluded. The [bishops’ conference] will announce in due course who will carry out this assessment, should it be deemed appropriate.”
Asked how deeply compensation recommendations were cut by the bishops’ February vote on the subject, a spokesperson for the conference said the bishops did not consider it appropriate to make that information public.
The compensation recommendations were made for alleged victims of clerical sexual abuse whose cases could not be litigated in court because of the civil statute of limitation in Portugal.
According to the bishops’ conference, 95 people applied for financial compensation, of whom 78 were considered initially eligible. Eleven of those claims were later rejected, and 66 cases approved for compensation. Fifty-seven have had compensation already awarded, and nine others are pending analysis. One case was still awaiting a judicial decision by the Holy See when the bishops issued their statement.