Pope Leo tells French church to heal deep wounds before meeting seven survivors

Pope Leo XIV called on the Catholic church to heal deep wounds and painful errors on 27 September 2026, before a private meeting with seven survivors of child sexual abuse by French clergy at the shrine of Lourdes. Addressing an estimated crowd of 150,000 people in a field near the shrine, the first US pope asked the church to reckon with its past during his four-day visit to France.theguardian.com

The meeting matters because it comes as France's Catholic church confronts the scale of abuse documented in a 2021 independent inquiry, and as about 2,000 people who reported sexual abuse by clergy or other church representatives seek reparations. Leo's visit is the first official papal visit to France in 18 years, and survivors' groups have already publicly questioned whether the encounter will change anything within the church.france24.com+1

What the pope said at Lourdes

Leo told the crowd that healing requires humility before God. "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," he said. He did not directly reference the sexual abuse scandals in France that affected at least 330,000 children over seven decades, but called on the church to reckon with its past.

Earlier on Sunday, Leo met French bishops and praised their courageous response to the painful scourge of abuse committed against minors by members of the clergy. He thanked them for listening, the search for truth, justice, forgiveness and making amends, and told them to maintain the greatest vigilance along the path they had begun, according to a readout provided by the Vatican.

The abuse in France was documented by a two-and-a-half-year independent inquiry whose 2021 report estimated that 330,000 children were sexually abused over seven decades by predatory priests or other Catholic figures. The inquiry found the crimes were covered up in a systemic way by a deliberate veil of silence in the church. France's Catholic bishops conference agreed to provide compensation after that report.

Scale of abuse in France

Reparations are now the live figure. France's Independent National Authority for Recognition and Reparation announced that about 2,000 people who reported sexual abuse by clergy or other church representatives were seeking reparations. The announcement came last week, ahead of Leo's arrival. By comparison, the 330,000 children identified in the 2021 report represent the estimated total abused over seven decades between 1950 and 2020.

Leo was due to meet seven survivors privately on Sunday after leading an open-air morning mass at Lourdes. Among them is a former pupil of the nearby Catholic boarding school Notre-Dame de Bétharram, whose former students have recounted violence, rape and sexual assault in what is thought to be the biggest child sexual abuse scandal at a school in French history.

Survivors pushed back before the meeting. On the day Leo arrived in Paris, a group published an open letter in Libération voicing fears that his visit would change nothing, criticising that the seven he was due to meet in Lourdes were carefully selected by the church rather than survivors' groups. "You will merely ask us for forgiveness. This is not enough," they wrote.

Survivors question the meeting

Others questioned the pace of change. Michele Le Reun-Gaigne, a co-leader of a French survivors' association, said that things are moving very slowly and that change is not going to happen overnight. In an interview published last year, Leo spoke of the crisis of clerical sexual abuse and said victims must be treated with great respect and understanding.

The visit also carries other controversies. Marko Rupnik, a Jesuit mosaic artist on trial in a Vatican court accused by more than two dozen women of psychological, spiritual and sexual abuse from the 1990s, created works the bishop of Lourdes ordered covered up. Leo passed the boarded-up mosaics on Saturday night. Rupnik is not known to have commented publicly on the allegations.

Leo also used the Lourdes mass to criticise medically assisted dying as false compassion, saying it is impossible to regard causing death as something normal and that what is legal is not necessarily moral. France adopted legislation last month allowing incurably ill adults the right to aid in dying. The pope's four-day trip includes six events in Lourdes, including a meeting with staff and patients at the shrine's care centre.