The Catholic Church-owned insurance company that insures Catholic organisations is struggling to keep up with demand for payouts relating to historical child sexual abuse.Catholic organisations need to find insurance elsewhere, but there are concerns they'll struggle to get cover for abuse claims and smaller organisations won't have the money to fund future claims.
The insurer has about 7,000 policies in force. Before entering run-off, it had more than 16,000. Most will end by June next year."The past few years in CCI's history have been continuously challenged by unprecedented demands on capital reserves, in large part due to high volumes of professional standards claims."The Australian Catholic Church releases "grim" data revealing 7 per cent of priests, working between 1950 and 2009, have been accused of child sex crimes.
Mr O'Halloran said the church should continue to ensure CCI had enough funds to continue operating and to continue insuring Catholic entities for abuse claims.… so for the Catholic Church to say that they can't afford to meet their liabilities through the Catholic Church Insurance, in my view, is immoral."Lawyer Angela Sdrinis, who specialises in abuse claims, said religious institutions generally were struggling to find insurance that would cover abuse claims.
"If there's no insurance to indemnify particularly some of the smaller orders or dioceses, I think we'll very quickly see that various sections of the Catholic Church are crying poor and that there won't be enough money to appropriately compensate victims," she said.