Pope Leo XIV has thanked a group of survivors of clerical abuse “for their painful testimony” and “reaffirmed his commitment” to end harm by Catholic priests at a meeting in southwestern France, the Vatican said. The leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics is on a four-day visit to France. On Sunday, the pontiff visited the pilgrimage town of Lourdes, where he privately met seven survivors of child abuse, now adults, and promised to further efforts to reform the Church in the wake of the global sexual abuse scandal.
The group said in a later news conference that the meeting was emotional and touching. The survivors said they felt heard and that they were impressed by Leo’s compassion and knowledge of their individual cases. But they hoped the words would be accompanied by action.
Jerome Guillement, who has written about a priest abusing him as a teenager, said at the news conference that the pope understood the “systemic” nature of sexual abuse in the Church. The pope told an estimated 150,000 people gathered for a Mass in a field near the famed Catholic shrine in Lourdes earlier on Sunday that the Church must have the courage to face its past. Veronique Garnier, another survivor who met with the pontiff, said she had found the Mass, in which Leo referred to abuse without directly apologising for it, troubling and wondered why she had attended.
But she said she was encouraged by her meeting with Leo. Leo also spoke about the abuse scandals in a closed-door meeting with French bishops on Sunday, according to a Vatican-provided text. He was expected to visit the northeastern city of Metz on Monday before returning to Rome the same day.
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