FACTBOX: Quotes on $660 million Catholic abuse settlement

Sun Jul 15, 2007 3:39pm EDT
 
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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A sampling of reaction on Sunday to the record $660 million settlement by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles with 508 victims of sex abuse from priests dating back more than 50 years:

STEVE SANCHEZ, one of the Los Angeles victims who will receive part of the settlement:

"Whether they give me 10 bucks or a million bucks, where can I take that check and give it to someone to make me 10 years old again?"

J. MICHAEL HENNIGAN, attorney for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles:

"We've offered sincere and heartfelt apologies in the past. I'm sure Cardinal (Roger) Mahony continues to feel that way and continues to seek to keep the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in the forefront of people who are solving these kinds of problems, rather than people who are creating them."

JUAN SAMAYOA, a parishioner at St. Dominic Church, in the Los Angeles:

"You don't know what abuses really happened at the hands of priests. I heard about a priest raping children in Mexico. But we can't believe it, never. That a member of the church can commit an error like this, I don't believe it."

"We don't need to be judging them. Only God can do that."

JOAQUIN BUSTAMENTE, a victim in the Los Angeles group who lives in Arizona:

"I take it all with a grain of salt because the church has deceived us and lied to us for so many years, so I'll believe it when I actually have the payment in my hand."

"I would now like to see the pedophiles defrocked and excommunicated as many have not been stripped of the sacrament of the priesthood."

CLAIRE HOGEN, Boston parishioner:

"I wish it would go away. Really, I do wish it would go away."

(Reporting by Mary Milliken in Los Angeles, Adam Tanner in San Francisco, Jason Szep in Boston and Tim Gaynor in Phoenix)

 

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