Source : Perth Now news
Pope Leo has reaffirmed his commitment to ending abuse of children by Catholic priests in a meeting with French abuse survivors, the Vatican said, hours after the pontiff urged the Church to admit its own failings and heal its “deep wounds.”
Survivors who met with the Pope praised the encounter in a press conference afterwards, saying he listened to them, was informed of their cases and said more work needed to be done to respond to the scandal.
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 Sunday, 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 Sunday, 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-Élysées with the pope in Paris on Saturday. He has also again urged the world to reconsider the development of artificial intelligence.
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.
Some survivors have said they are doubtful the encounter would result in quick changes by the Church.
“It isn’t going to happen overnight,” Michèle Le Reun-Gaigné, co-president of an association for survivors in western France, told Reuters.
Bishop Pierre-Antoine Bozo, the spokesperson for the French bishops, said the Pope’s desire to have the meeting shows the issue “must always remain among our concerns”.
with AP
