The Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ $880 million abuse claims settlement, announced Oct. 16, brings the total payouts of U.S. Catholic dioceses for abuse claims since 2004 to more than $5 billion — and possibly more than $6 billion — OSV News has found.
An aggregated total from two decades of reports issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops shows the nation’s dioceses and eparchies paid some $4.384 billion to settle claims between 2004 and 2023.
Data for fiscal year 2024 is still pending; however, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ $880 million settlement and a $323 million settlement announced Sept. 26 by the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, account for $1.2 billion within the span of less than a month.
Those two settlements, plus the USCCB total for 2004-2023, add up to $5.59 billion.
The USCCB 2004-2023 total does not appear to include a $660 million settlement announced in 2007 by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles which, along with the Oct. 16 settlement, brings that archdiocese’s total to at least $1.54 billion in abuse-related costs over the past two decades.
OSV News is awaiting clarification from the archdiocese on whether the USCCB total for 2007 — listed as $498,678,858 — reflects any portion of the archdiocese’s 2007 payout. Carolina Guevara, chief communications officer for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, told OSV News in a Nov. 5 email that her office was working to confirm how the settlement was reported. The overall national total of diocesan settlement payouts for the past two decades could exceed $6.24 billion, if the USCCB data does not already include the 2007 Archdiocese of Los Angeles payout.
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