Pope Leo pledges action on clergy abuse after meeting French survivors

LOURDES, France - Pope Leo reaffirmed his commitment to ending abuse of children by Catholic priests in a meeting with French abuse survivors on Sept 27, the Vatican said, hours after the pontiff urged the Church to admit its own failings and heal its “deep wounds.”

In a two-hour meeting with seven survivors in France, where Leo is on a three-city weekend visit, the pope met privately with each of the victims and heard proposals for how to improve the Church’s safeguarding measures, said a Vatican statement.

“He thanked them for their painful testimony and reaffirmed his commitment to ensuring that the harm they experienced is not repeated for others,” it said.

Leo is on a whirlwind four-day visit to France. Local Church leaders are hoping he will help repair the Church’s standing after a 2021 report found that some 330,000 French children had been abused by Catholic clergy and lay leaders over seven decades.

Earlier on Sept 27, the pope told an estimated 150,000 people gathered for a Mass in a field near the famed Catholic shrine in Lourdes that the Church must have the courage to face its past.

“In order to heal the deep wounds, infidelities and painful errors that have occurred within (the Church), we must humbly place ourselves under the Lord’s purifying gaze,” the first US pope said.

Leo also spoke about the abuse scandals in a closed-door meeting with French bishops on Sept 27, according to a Vatican-provided text.

The pope thanked the bishops for the “courageous measures” he said they had taken to confront the scandals and urged them to buttress their safeguarding efforts and “continue on the path undertaken, maintaining the greatest vigilance.”

Leo has drawn large crowds on his visit to France. Around 800,000 people came for an outdoor Mass on the Champs-Elysees with the pope in Paris on Sept 26. He has also again urged the world to reconsider the development of artificial intelligence.

Victims sceptical papal meeting will spur action

Leo has previously apologised directly for abuse scandals that have damaged the Church’s credibility across the world. On a trip to Spain in June, he told bishops there that they must listen to survivors and offer them reparations.

Ahead of the pope’s meeting with survivors on Sept 27, some survivors said they were doubtful the encounter would result in quick changes by the Church.

“I am quite sceptical that the pope will solve the issue, at least not immediately,” Michele Le Reun-Gaigne, co-president of an association for survivors in western France, told Reuters.

“Things are moving very slowly,” she said. “It isn’t going to happen overnight.”

Bishop Pierre-Antoine Bozo, the spokesperson for the French bishops, said the pope’s desire to have the meeting “shows that we cannot ignore this issue and that it must always remain among our concerns”.

Lourdes connected to Vatican scandal

The pope’s itinerary in France included six events in Lourdes, a town in the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains that attracts some 3 million pilgrims a year for visits to a shrine to the Virgin Mary and purported healing spring waters.

The site is also connected to a scandal that has dogged the Vatican in recent years. The shrine’s facade has a series of mosaics by Rev Marko Rupnik, a prominent religious artist with Vatican ties, who has been accused of sexual abuse.

Rupnik, accused by more than 20 women, is not known to have commented publicly on the accusations. Five of his alleged victims wrote an open letter to the pope on Sept 24, sharply criticising an ongoing Vatican trial of the cleric.

The mosaics, stories tall, have been covered for the pope’s visit with large, muted yellow tarps. Arriving for the Mass on Sept 27, Leo was driven in his open-top popemobile near the facade of the shrine and the covered mosaics.

The pope, who on Sept 25 sharply reiterated Catholic opposition to assisted dying initiatives two months after France created a legal right to die for those with incurable illnesses, again mentioned the Church’s pro-life stance in Lourdes.

Meeting with volunteers who help sick pilgrims hoping to find a miracle in the shrine’s waters, Leo urged them to remember the “profound meaning” of healthcare work.

“That is to care for a suffering person, not to eliminate that person,” said the pope. “Medicine must never become the servant of programmed death!” REUTERS