A Look at the Largest Clergy Abuse Settlements Reached by Catholic Organizations in the US (U.S. News and World Report)

A wire-service backed news roundup aggregating publicly reported clergy abuse settlements and diocesan bankruptcy filings by US Catholic dioceses and religious orders since the crisis became public in 2002, current as of its own February 2026 publication date. It reports 28 US dioceses and territories having filed for bankruptcy citing clergy abuse claims, 15 of those having reached settlement agreements paying close to 900 million dollars to more than 2,600 victims through those specific proceedings, a figure distinct from and smaller than the cumulative total of every individual settlement reached outside bankruptcy (the Los Angeles archdiocese alone reached more than 1.5 billion dollars across its own settlements). No single authoritative running total for every US settlement exists; this atlas states the floor this source documents rather than an invented aggregate.