Mainz, Germany - THE Catholic Church in Germany has paid compensation worth a total of 1.49 million euros ($2.44 million) to 594 former slave labourers employed in Catholic institutions under the Nazi regime.
Cardinal Karl Lehmann said each individual had received 2556 euros ($4190) from a 2.5 million euro ($4.1 million) fund set up in 2000.
The payments were a "symbolic material gesture" and were made as an apology and in a spirit of reconciliation.
The remaining one million euros ($1.64 million) will be donated to a Freiburg-based charity which cares for former detainees of Nazi camps.
The Catholic Church in Germany set up the compensation fund after deciding not to contribute to a far larger fund created by the federal state and German companies in 1999.
The Church has completed its attempts to trace the former slave labourers.
It knows of around 5000 slave labourers it employed during World War II - most in farming or cleaning and housekeeping work.