The number of requests for compensation for sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has increased to 93, said this Thursday, November 27, the coordinator of the VITA Group.
“At this moment, the VITA Group has already received 93 requests for financial compensation, the last ones arrived last week. These are people that we are now scheduling, for the respective interviews, and there are two people who reside outside of Portugal”, declared Rute Agulhas, in Fátima, on the sidelines of the international congress “From Reflection to Action: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Prevention and Response to Sexual Violence”, with 300 participants.
The VITA Group, created by the Portuguese Episcopal Conference (CEP) to monitor situations of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, presents itself as an autonomous and independent structure, which aims to welcome, listen, monitor and prevent situations of sexual violence against children and vulnerable adults in the context of the Catholic Church.
“We are trying to reconcile schedules and wait for people to come to us. And, therefore, there are interviews scheduled for December, until close to Christmas, there are also interviews scheduled for January”, he said.
Regarding the timetable for this work, Rute Agulhas clarified that CEP’s recent assumption was that this process would be completed by the beginning of 2026.
However, the processes that are arriving now, which have interviews for close to Christmas or even the beginning of January, “naturally will not be ready at the beginning of January”, he highlighted, as it is necessary to analyze the process and give an opinion.
On November 13th, the CEP announced that, until that day, 89 requests for financial compensation had been presented following abuses in the Catholic Church, 78 of which were considered effective.
The coordinator of the VITA Group noted that “effectiveness does not mean that they will necessarily receive compensation”, but that “they have passed a first phase of evaluation that other processes have not gone through, for example, because they involve situations of abuse outside the Church or because they involve situations of non-sexual abuse”.
“Therefore, these 93 are still under analysis, they are still being studied, in some of these situations we are still awaiting information from the Church itself”, he added.
In this context, he mentioned that there are also situations that “allegedly happened by Portuguese priests, but outside of Portugal”, and these cases require “articulation with other dioceses and archdioceses, not only in Portugal, [como] other episcopal conferences.”
The VITA Group coordinator highlighted that “this takes time”, particularly when it comes to African countries.
Asked about the deadline for completing the process, Rute Agulhas replied that, “clearly, this is not a process to drag on until 2026”.
“What is expected is that by the end of the year, so the beginning of 2026, these decisions can be taken and that the Portuguese Episcopal Conference can move on to the next step of attributing compensation”, he added.
The person responsible said that the VITA Group was not asked to suggest a financial amount for compensation, but rather “a somewhat transnational analysis”, to understand “what happened in the other countries”.
Cross-referencing this information with national jurisprudence, Rute Agulhas believes that values for financial compensation can be reached.
“I wouldn’t say [valores] fair, because fair, fair, never is. There is no value that can compensate for the damage experienced, but, somehow, there is some type of moral, ethical compensation here, and that is the objective”, he added.