Five men who said they were abused as schoolboys by paedophile priest Fr Malachy Finegan are to share more than £1.2 million (€1.4 million) in compensation.
They will also receive written apologies from Archbishop Eamon Martin, the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, on behalf of the Diocese of Dromore.
The five men, who cannot be identified, were pupils at St Colman’s College in Newry, Co Down, between 1972 and 1984.
They sued the diocese and the school’s board of governors in the High Court in Belfast over their alleged failure to protect them from Finegan, alleging they had suffered a catalogue of serious sexual, physical and emotional abuse at the school, which they said included grooming, physical assaults and severe sexual abuse.
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Their solicitor, Claire McKeegan of Phoenix Law, said the final settlements were resolved at the door of the court on Wednesday. The total compensation includes a £170,000 sum agreed last month for one of the victims.
The settlements do not involve an admission of liability by either defendant.
Ms McKeegan said her clients “endured a lifetime of pain and suffering at the hands of Malachy Finegan and other staff members at St Colman’s who exploited their positions of power and trust to inflict abuse of the utmost depravity”.
She praised “the bravery and resilience shown by our clients in pursuing justice”.
She welcomed the archbishop’s commitment to providing an apology, but said it was “deeply regrettable that the protracted legal process” had added to the victims’ trauma.
“Delay tactics and 11th-hour adjournments brought by the Church and college served only to inflict further distress on our survivor clients and obstruct them from accessing justice,” she said.
One of the victims, known as CA, who was a pupil at St Colman’s between 1979 and 1985, called for a statutory inquiry into clerical abuse in Northern Ireland, saying “these predators were able to gorge themselves on us young children under the cover of the cloth”.
“Lack of truth leaves an open wound,” he said. “We want to see priests called to answer their actions and omissions.”
CA said there was an “ongoing suspicion” Finegan had been an informer and “many of us suspect this could have allowed him to exploit children with impunity”.
“We need truth and answers,” he said.
Finegan, who died in 2002, was a former president of St Colman’s College and was accused of a long campaign of child sexual abuse, but he was never prosecuted or questioned by police about accusations made against him.
In 2018 it emerged that the Diocese of Dromore had settled a previous claim made by one of his accusers, and the board of governors at St Colman’s condemned physical, sexual and emotional abuse inflicted by Finegan.
