Pope Leo Meets Abuse Survivors During Lourdes Visit

Pope Leo XIV, the first American pontiff, met privately in Lourdes, France, on Sept 27, 2026, with seven survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, part of a three-city, four-day visit that also drew hundreds of thousands to Masses in Paris and Lourdes.²⁵⁶⁴

Private meeting with survivors

The pope spent about two hours with the group of four men and three women, meeting some individually to hear their accounts and proposals before speaking with the full group for roughly 30 minutes, according to accounts of the encounter.⁷⁹¹¹

He told the survivors he would "reaffirm[ed] his commitment to ensuring that the evil they had experienced would not be repeated for others," and said the Church must "continue along the path already begun on responding to the clerical sexual abuse crisis, maintaining the greatest vigilance."⁹

Addressing French bishops separately, Pope Leo praised what he described as their courageous response to abuse committed against minors within the clergy, telling them: "you have confronted with determination the painful scourge of abuse of minors committed by members of the clergy or within an ecclesial context."³⁹

He also urged clergy toward humility, saying admission of mistakes is indispensable for spiritual growth, and told bishops: "Always have the courage to acknowledge faults in love of the truth, and the determination to bind up wounds with the charity of the Good Shepherd."³⁹

Scale of the French abuse crisis

A landmark 2021 report from the CIASE commission estimated that roughly 330,000 minors suffered abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy and lay Church staff in France across some seven decades; focusing solely on abuse committed by priests and religious personnel from 1950 through 2020, the commission put the figure closer to 216,000.²³⁷

INIRR, the reparations body French bishops launched in 2021 to review claims and issue compensation to victims, said roughly 2,000 people had filed for redress before its work officially wrapped up on August 31.¹⁷

Following the pope's visit, French bishops announced the creation of a new permanent national body to support abuse victims, according to accounts of the Lourdes meetings.⁷

The Rupnik case

Ahead of the visit, five people who say they were victimized by Slovenian Jesuit priest Marko Rupnik — accused of assaulting upward of twenty women across a thirty-year span — wrote an open letter to Pope Leo protesting what they called the Vatican's prolonged silence over his canonical trial. Rupnik has not commented publicly on the accusations.¹²⁷¹⁰

The letter stated that the "prolonged silence they have experienced was a further and ongoing form of violence that bears down like a heavy boulder," and warned that victims might conclude "it is useless to report abuse to ecclesiastical authorities, because nothing happens anyway, no one will pay, and victims will never receive justice." It added that the survivors needed the truth every bit as much as the Church itself desperately needed it.¹⁰

In July, the Vatican had rejected a report claiming Rupnik was acquitted, with spokesman Matteo Bruni saying that "during the proceedings, as with any judicial process, no information regarding the ongoing investigation may be shared in any way out of respect for the process itself," and stating proceedings were continuing.¹⁰

Rupnik's mosaics, which he created in 2008 for Lourdes' Rosary basilica to mark the 150th anniversary of the apparitions, were ordered hidden from view by Bishop Jean-Marc Micas in March 2025; David Torchala said that by August every remaining panel on the basilica's exterior had been concealed ahead of the pope's arrival.⁷⁹¹⁰

The survivors' letter said the Church's decision to cover the mosaics before the pope's arrival was an "exceptionally strong and courageous act that we deeply appreciated, not least because we have never felt an atmosphere of solidarity toward us."¹⁰

Crowds and wider visit

It marked the first time in almost twenty years that a pope had made an official state visit to France. Pope Leo, who leads 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide and had visited Lourdes twice before as a young man, celebrated an outdoor Mass at Place de la Concorde in Paris that the Vatican said drew about 800,000 people, revised upward from an initial estimate of 700,000.⁶⁸⁴¹

He also travelled down the Champs-Élysées in his popemobile, visited a diocesan migrant support association called Maison Bakhita, and met newly baptised Catholics, before moving on to Lourdes, a Pyrenees shrine town that draws about three million pilgrims a year for its healing waters associated with the Virgin Mary.⁴²¹

At Lourdes, Pope Leo celebrated an outdoor Mass attended by an estimated 150,000 people and took part in a candlelight procession from the Grotto to the basilica; he also prayed before a plaque commemorating victims of clergy sexual abuse.³¹⁹⁷

Reactions

Pilgrims attending the Paris Mass described the atmosphere among the crowds. One attendee, Antoine, said the mood that day felt far more celebratory than it had the night before, with people of every generation adding to its beauty, while another, Maël, called the gathering for the pope simply magnificent.⁴