Diocese of Buffalo will pay $150 million in sex abuse settlement

Assets sold to help pay a massive clergy sex abuse settlement in the Diocese of Buffalo, New York, include the diocese’s former headquarters, pictured here, in downtown Buffalo. / Credit: Warren LeMay/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0

CNA Staff, Apr 23, 2025 / 11:00 am (CNA).

The Diocese of Buffalo, New York, will pay out a massive $150 million sum as part of a settlement with victims of clergy sexual abuse there. 

The diocese said in a press release that the diocese itself, along with parishes and affiliates, would provide the payment “to survivors of sexual abuse for acts perpetrated against them by clergy, religious, lay employees, and volunteers.” 

The settlement amount was still set to be voted on by abuse victims and approved by U.S. bankruptcy court, but the proposal has been accepted by the committee of abuse survivors in the suit, the diocese said. 

The settlement “represents an essential milestone on this protracted and arduous journey, and importantly, enables us to finally provide a measure of financial restitution to victim-survivors, which has been our primary objective all along,” Bishop Michael Fisher said on Tuesday. 

“While indeed a steep sum, no amount of money can undo the tremendous harm and suffering the victim survivors have endured, or eliminate the lingering mental, emotional, and spiritual pain they have been forced to carry throughout their lives,” the prelate said. 

The diocese said it was still in talks with insurers “to determine amounts to be added to the final settlement fund from prevailing coverages.”

In a press release provided to CNA, New York law firm Jeff Anderson & Associates, which has represented abuse victims in the suit, said the amount was “the second-largest contribution by a bankrupt Roman Catholic institution and its affiliates in any Roman Catholic bankruptcy case to date.”

The settlement is “a major step forward to reaching a long-awaited resolution for the hundreds of strong, heroic survivors who came forward in the Diocese of Buffalo,” attorney Stacey Benson said in the release. 

The parties in the suit “continue to negotiate nonmonetary terms of the settlement, including strengthening child protection measures and the release of diocesan documents pertaining to the accused perpetrators,” the law firm noted. 

The payout comes several months after the largest diocesan-level bankruptcy settlement in U.S. history, when the Diocese of Rockville Centre — also in New York — agreed to pay $323 million to abuse victims. 

The largest Church abuse payout total in U.S. history thus far has been at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which last year agreed to a near-$1 billion payment to abuse victims.