The Archdiocese of Boston denied a published report on Thursday that enough clergy sexual abuse victims had accepted its proposed $85 million offer to settle their lawsuits.
The church said that while it is optimistic it will receive signed settlement agreements from at least 80 percent of victims "in the very near future," the number of acceptances had not yet passed that important threshold.
The archdiocese, the epicenter of a pedophile priest scandal that rocked the Roman Catholic Church, agreed last month to pay up to $85 million to settle lawsuits filed by hundreds of people who say they were sexually abused by clergy.
The proposed deal would mark the largest single payout by a U.S. Catholic diocese to settle civil litigation. But for the settlement to proceed, at least 80 percent of the more than 500 plaintiffs must accept the archdiocese's offer by next Thursday.
Roderick MacLeish, a lawyer representing roughly half of the plaintiffs, was quoted as saying Thursday that the 80 percent level had been reached. But the archdiocese said this was not yet the case.
"Contrary to public reports, the number of plaintiffs to date who have accepted the settlement has not reached the eighty-percent threshold," the Rev. Chris Coyne, an archdiocese spokesman, said in a statement.
Mitchell Garabedian, one of the lawyers who hammered out the deal, agreed that the report was premature.
"Someone has jumped the gun and been a little too eager," Garabedian, who represents 120 plaintiffs against the church, told Reuters.
MacLeish did not return a telephone call and two emails seeking comment.