Abuse Survivors Approve $800 Million Settlement With the Archdiocese of New York

Survivors of clergy sexual abuse have unanimously approved an $800 million settlement with the Archdiocese of New York, resolving claims brought by about 1,300 people, Reuters reported on Saturday.

The settlement was first agreed in principle in May. Saturday’s unanimous vote by the survivors approves the deal, and a formal signing is scheduled for November 6. Archbishop Ronald Hicks confirmed the approval in a letter to clergy on Saturday, CNN reported.

Under the terms reported by Reuters, the settlement requires the archdiocese to release Church documents concerning offenders. It also preserves the survivors’ ability to pursue the Church’s insurers for additional money beyond the $800 million — the deal settles the claims against the archdiocese without closing off claims against the insurance companies.

The agreement also takes an archdiocesan bankruptcy filing off the table. A bankruptcy would have moved the claims into a single court-supervised proceeding; the settlement instead resolves them by agreement, with the formal signing on November 6 as the next step.

At $800 million, the New York deal is the second-largest settlement by a U.S. archdiocese in the abuse crisis. The largest is the $880 million settlement reached by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2024. The New York archdiocese, whose seat is St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, is one of the largest in the country, and the claims it is settling were brought by about 1,300 people.

How many of those claimants are represented by Jeff Anderson, the attorney long associated with survivors’ cases against the Church, was reported differently on Saturday. Reuters reported that Anderson’s firm represents 300 survivors in the New York settlement. CNN quoted Anderson speaking on behalf of people who filed “more than 1,000” claims against the Church in New York state. Another outlet put his share at more than 250 of the plaintiffs. The three figures were printed by the outlets as stated; they are not the same count, and they are reported here as each outlet gave them.

On the money each survivor will see, Zot News reported that each survivor is to receive at least $250,000 under the settlement. The $800 million figure is the total reported by Reuters and CNN; the terms reported Saturday also leave room for survivors to recover more from insurers.

The sequence, as reported, runs in three steps. The first came in May, when the settlement was agreed in principle at $800 million. The second came on Saturday, when the survivors themselves voted — unanimously, according to the reports — to approve it, and Archbishop Hicks confirmed that approval in writing to the archdiocese’s clergy. The third is the formal signing, scheduled for November 6, which executes the agreement the survivors have now approved.

The claims being settled are those of about 1,300 people who reported sexual abuse connected to the archdiocese. The settlement resolves those claims against the archdiocese itself. Two parts of the deal reach beyond the payment: the release of the Church’s documents concerning offenders, which forms part of the terms reported by Reuters, and the preservation of the survivors’ separate claims against the Church’s insurers, which the settlement does not close off and which could add to what survivors ultimately recover.

What happens next is procedural. The formal signing is scheduled for November 6, converting Saturday’s approval into the executed settlement. The document-release term and the preserved claims against insurers are parts of the deal as reported by Reuters, alongside the end of the claims against the archdiocese itself.

Sources: Reuters; CNN; Zot News.