Catholic Church Abuse Settlements: Largest Payouts and Bankruptcies

U.S. Catholic dioceses and religious orders have paid more than $5 billion to resolve clergy sexual abuse claims over the past two decades, and the figure keeps climbing. The largest single agreement to date is the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’s $880 million deal with 1,353 survivors in October 2024. The Archdiocese of New York has proposed an $800 million settlement that could rival it. Behind those headline numbers sit dozens of smaller diocesan deals, 44 Catholic bankruptcy filings, and bitter fights with insurance carriers over who ultimately pays. Catholic Church abuse settlements have reshaped parish life, forced the sale of landmark properties, and in many places remain unfinished business.

What Has Been Paid So Far

A January 2025 report from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University put total U.S. spending on clergy sexual abuse allegations at $5.025 billion between 2004 and 2023. Three-quarters went to victims. Seventeen percent covered attorneys’ fees, 6 percent went to the support of accused abusers, and 2 percent to miscellaneous costs. Another $728 million was spent on prevention programs, background checks, and training over the same period.¹

Insurance carriers covered only about 16 percent of those costs on average. The rest came from diocesan assets, reserves, investment accounts, and loans.¹

The pace has not slowed. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ audit covering July 2024 through June 2025 recorded roughly $389.9 million in abuse-related costs in that single year, a 69 percent jump over the prior reporting period. The audit documented 1,070 new allegations involving 973 victims, with about 60 percent arising from lawsuits, bankruptcy proceedings, and compensation programs rather than fresh disclosures.²

The State Laws Driving the Current Wave

Most of the recent settlement volume traces to a handful of states that reopened the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse claims.

California AB-218

California Assembly Bill 218, signed in 2019 and effective January 1, 2020, extended the standard filing deadline for childhood sexual assault claims to age 40 or within five years of discovering the injury, whichever is later. It also created a three-year revival window through the end of 2022 for claims that had been time-barred, and allowed triple damages when a defendant willfully covered up abuse.³

Roughly 600 previously barred clergy abuse claims were filed against California dioceses during the revival window, and several of those dioceses later sought bankruptcy protection.⁴

New York Child Victims Act

New York’s Child Victims Act, enacted in 2019, opened a lookback window beginning August 14, 2019, allowing adult survivors to sue regardless of when the abuse occurred. By May 2021, more than 3,300 lawsuits involving the Catholic Church had been filed, naming over 1,700 individuals including cardinals, bishops, priests, and lay staff.⁵

Four of New York’s eight Catholic dioceses — Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rockville Centre — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy by early 2021.⁶

The Largest Settlements

Archdiocese of Los Angeles — $880 Million (2024)

Announced October 16, 2024, the Los Angeles deal is the largest diocesan settlement in U.S. history. It resolves claims from 1,353 survivors and brought the archdiocese’s cumulative abuse payouts past $1.5 billion when combined with $740 million in earlier settlements. The archdiocese funded the agreement through investments, reserves, bank financing, and contributions from religious orders named in the suits, after years of covering litigation costs by selling real estate and taking out loans. Payments began in August 2025, with a final installment set for April 1, 2026.⁷⁸⁴

Archdiocese of New York — $800 Million Proposed (2026)

The Archdiocese of New York proposed an $800 million settlement in May 2026 to resolve more than 1,300 Child Victims Act claims. The money would be paid into a trust in two installments: $615 million up front and $185 million fifteen months later. Each plaintiff could take a $250,000 lump sum or go before an arbitrator for a potentially higher award. The deal also requires the archdiocese to publish the names of credibly accused clergy and maintain a public archive of abuse documents at Iona College.⁹

As of June 2026, the settlement is not final. Every plaintiff must agree. Attorneys for the archdiocese have warned that bankruptcy is the likely alternative if the deal collapses.¹⁰

To raise the money, the archdiocese has been liquidating major assets. In late 2025 it sold the land beneath the Lotte New York Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue for $490 million, though a significant share of that went to earlier debts. It also sold its former headquarters on First Avenue for roughly $100 million, closed churches, and cut operating costs by 10 percent.¹¹¹²

Other Major Recent Settlements

Several additional agreements rank among the largest in the country:

Archdiocese of New Orleans: $230 million, approved by Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Grabill on December 8, 2025, covering roughly 500 to 600 survivors. The trust was funded by $130 million in cash from the archdiocese, $70 million from affordable housing property sales, about $30 million from insurers, and $65 million from nearly 150 parishes and charities. The plan also requires new child protection protocols, a Survivors Bill of Rights, and a public archive of abuse documents at LSU.¹³
Diocese of Rockville Centre: $323 million, confirmed in December 2024, resolving more than 500 claims. Parishes and related entities contributed $234.8 million, and insurers paid over $85 million.¹⁴¹⁵
Diocese of Syracuse: $176 million, with the final decree approved by Chief Judge Wendy Kinsella on February 25, 2026, covering 411 survivors. Insurers contributed $76.1 million and parishes and the diocese added $100 million.¹⁶
Diocese of Camden: $180 million supplemental settlement in 2026 for about 324 survivors, following an earlier $87.5 million agreement in 2022, pending bankruptcy court approval.¹⁷
Diocese of Albany: $148 million settlement announced in March 2026.¹⁸

Earlier landmark deals set the pattern. The Archdiocese of Boston paid $85 million in 2003 covering more than 500 claims. The Diocese of San Diego paid $198 million in 2007 for more than 140 victims. The Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus paid $166 million in 2011 to resolve more than 450 claims.¹⁹

The Bankruptcy Wave

As of March 2026, 44 U.S. Catholic religious organizations have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Twenty-nine of those cases have concluded. Fifteen remain pending.²⁰

Bankruptcy halts individual trials and forces all claimants into a single negotiation, which prevents early plaintiffs from draining assets before later ones can be heard. For survivors it often means years of delay and payouts smaller than a jury might award. The Diocese of Burlington in Vermont, for example, had spent $2 million in legal fees over two years of proceedings as of mid-2026 without a finalized reorganization plan.¹⁸

Cases Still Open

Archdiocese of San Francisco: filed August 2023 to address more than 500 claims. Judge Dennis Montali is overseeing the case, and the archdiocese is pressing for accelerated mediation toward a global settlement.²¹
Diocese of Oakland: filed in 2023 with more than 300 lawsuits. In December 2025 the diocese proposed $200 million over five years into a survivor trust, plus $42.5 million from three insurers. Advocacy groups called the offer insufficient, pointing to a recent $16 million jury verdict against the diocese in a single abuse case.²²²³
Diocese of San Diego: filed June 17, 2024, with roughly 400 lawsuits. As of June 2026 the court is reviewing settlement agreements for an initial group of 41 claimants, but no overall figure has been set.²⁴
Archdiocese of Baltimore: proposed a $169 million compensation fund that survivors are challenging, seeking more than $500 million. The reorganization plan was filed in May 2026, with a federal judge expected to weigh competing arguments in September.²⁵

How Individual Payouts Are Set

Per-survivor amounts vary enormously. BishopAccountability.org data puts the average U.S. settlement at about $268,000 per victim, but that number hides a wide range. The 2007 Los Angeles settlement worked out to roughly $1.3 million per victim. Seattle’s 2016 agreement averaged over $1 million. The Diocese of Pittsburgh’s 2021 claims averaged about $86,000.¹⁹

In bankruptcy-driven settlements, trusts typically distribute money through a point-scoring system. The Syracuse model scores each of the 411 claims up to 200 points based on the nature and duration of the abuse, its impact on the survivor’s life, and the survivor’s participation in litigation or mediation. A survivor’s share equals their percentage of total points. Appeals cost $425.²⁶

Outside bankruptcy, individual amounts turn on the severity and duration of the abuse, the psychological and professional impact on the survivor, the jurisdiction’s damages laws, and whether the institution knew about and concealed the abuse.

Insurance Fights That Shape the Money

Behind nearly every large settlement sits a dispute with insurance carriers. Dioceses have turned to decades-old commercial liability policies to cover abuse claims, and carriers have resisted.

The highest-profile fight involves the Archdiocese of New York and Chubb, through its subsidiary Century Indemnity. The archdiocese says Chubb issued more than 30 primary and excess liability policies between 1956 and 2003 and has refused to honor them. The archdiocese sued 32 insurers for nonpayment in 2019. Chubb countersued in 2023, arguing that abuse is intentional conduct and therefore outside policy coverage. By mid-2023 the archdiocese said it expected Chubb to owe $859 million on more than 3,000 claims.²⁷

The dispute has grown unusually personal. In early 2026 the archdiocese accused Chubb of secretly operating a website called the Church Accountability Project that encouraged victims to file claims, allegedly to strengthen Chubb’s litigation position. Chubb defended the site and called the accusation a desperate tactic. In May 2026 a court-appointed referee ruled that the archdiocese may depose Chubb CEO Evan Greenberg about his involvement in coverage decisions.²⁸²⁹

Carriers elsewhere have raised similar defenses: that dioceses settled claims without insurer consent, failed to disclose known risks, or that abuse represents intentional acts rather than covered negligence. Many original policies from the 1960s and 1970s have been lost, forcing dioceses to prove their terms through secondary evidence.³⁰

What Survivors Get Besides Money

Recent settlements increasingly include non-monetary terms. The New Orleans agreement requires an outside expert to monitor child protection practices, grants a survivor a seat on the archdiocese’s abuse review board, establishes a direct communication line for survivors to the archbishop, and mandates a public archive of abuse documents.¹³ The New York proposal would require publication of all credibly accused clergy and a public archive of abuse records.¹⁰

Angela Walker, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in response to the New York proposal that money alone is not enough, emphasizing the need for accountability for those who protected perpetrators and for dismantling the “culture of silence” that allowed the abuse to persist.¹⁰

Parishes, schools, and other Church institutions are bearing the practical cost. The Diocese of Oakland announced plans in April 2026 to close 13 parishes. The Archdiocese of New York put St. Brigid’s School in the East Village up for sale after closing it, sold the former church of St. Elizabeth of Hungary in Yorkville for $11.8 million, and stopped regular masses at Most Holy Redeemer Church. The Archdiocese of New Orleans sold 14 affordable housing complexes serving roughly 1,600 elderly residents for $152 million to help fund its settlement.¹⁸¹²

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