Bishop Robert Mulvee stood with attorneys for 36 male and female sex-abuse victims, and announced the diocese was settling the decade-old cases.
“I hope that this action will be helpful to the victims of abuse and bring them in some way closer to closure and reconciliation with their God, their Church, their families and themselves,” the bishop said Monday, according to the Associated Press.
“As bishop of Providence, I reach out with deep sadness to the victims,” he said in the presence of several victims. “It is their pain that motivates this” settlement.
The settlement covers all but two of the men and women who sued the diocese in the early 1990s, accusing 11 priests and a nun of abusing them when they were children. Negotiations continue in the final two cases.
Church officials said they’d seek both diocese and outside financing to cover the settlement, and that it would be paid within 10 to 15 years.
