MADRID — Pope Leo XIV met Monday with six survivors of clergy sexual abuse in Madrid and vowed to consider their suggestions for how the Catholic Church can improve its response to the crisis, the Vatican said.
The meeting, which followed in the tradition of popes meeting with abuse survivors during their foreign trips, lasted about an hour and took place at the Vatican embassy in Madrid, the Vatican said in a statement.
Spain’s Catholic hierarchy has only recently begun reckoning with its legacy of abuse and cover-up after long dismissing the severity of the scandal that came to light thanks to reporting by the newspaper El País.
In 2023, the Spanish government’s ombudsman delivered a damning 800-page report estimating there were hundreds of thousands of possible victims in Spain over decades — based on a survey of 8,000 people. The report also examined 487 known cases.
Spain’s bishops rejected the estimate, saying its own investigation had uncovered 728 sexual abusers within the church since 1945.
During Monday’s meeting, the survivors told the pope their stories and recommendations for how the church should better respond, the Vatican said. Victims in Spain and elsewhere have long complained that the church’s response to the scandal was often retraumatizing, with victims often accused of only seeking money or to harm the church.
“The pope listened with affection and attention, assured them of his closeness — and that of the entire church community — and pledged his commitment to ensuring that the suggestions received serve as a foundation for further efforts, so that the church may truly be a safe and spiritually healthy place where wounds find comfort and healing,” said Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni.
The encounter marked the first known time Leo had met with victims while on a foreign visit, though it was not his first time hearing first-hand from survivors.
As a bishop in Chiclayo, Peru, the former Robert Prevost was in charge of listening to victims as the point of reference for the Peruvian bishops conference. In that capacity, he became intimately aware of the abusive practices in the powerful Peruvian group Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, which Pope Francis formally suppressed last year.
As pope, Leo has insisted on the need to listen to victims but he has also demanded that the rights of accused priests be upheld.
In his recent encyclical, he said the journey for justice for victims included “just reparation” and included not only victims of sexual abuse but also spiritual, economic, institutional and power-based abuse, as well as abuses of conscience.
Ahead of the expected meeting with Leo, several groups representing survivors that were not included said they were left in the dark about the encounter, and held a small protest outside the Vatican embassy in Madrid.
“Our associations are pleased that a group of victims from the reparation plan can be heard by the pope, but they do not represent all the victims,” said Juan Cuatrecasas, a spokesperson for the Robbed Childhood association.
Before the meeting, Leo told Spanish bishops that they must offer reparations to survivors and that the entire church community should have an “ever more determined commitment to prevention and a culture of care.”
Amid public outrage over the abuse crisis, Spain launched a reparations system earlier this year for clerical abuse cases too old to be prosecuted that requires the participation of the Catholic Church and the Spanish government.
Leo also reaffirmed the right of the Catholic Church to maintain secrecy involving the sacrament of confession, amid efforts in Europe and elsewhere to force priests to report abuse disclosed during confession.
