But survivors should be aware of the limitations, and mindful of the deadline, which gives them only a few months to act. Mr. Feinberg says settlement programs need strict deadlines, because claimants can be procrastinators. That seems unduly harsh, given the guilt, shame and silence that enshroud sexual abuse. It’s one thing to come forward as a victim of a bombing, quite another to do so as a survivor of a pedophile priest.

And besides, the procrastinator label applies, by his own admission, to Cardinal Dolan himself. He could have offered this program years ago, but he somehow never got around to it. “I wish I would have done this quite a while ago,” he told The Times. “I just finally thought: ‘Darn it, let’s do it. I’m tired of putting it off.’ ”

Cardinal Dolan says he was moved by “mercy” — Pope Francis has declared this a “Jubilee Year of Mercy,” a time to focus on reconciliation and forgiveness.

Mercy? Knowing Cardinal Dolan, more like strategy. As a church official in Milwaukee, he tried to shield millions of dollars in church assets from abuse survivors, and he has led the push to block a bill in Albany that would lift New York’s onerous statute of limitations on sexual-abuse cases. The cardinal’s evocation of mercy can just as easily be seen as an attempt to clean the archdiocese’s abuse caseload and balance sheets against the day that bill, the Child Victims Act, becomes law.