Pope Leo met with seven survivors of sexual abuse by members of the French clergy this evening in Lourdes at the bishop’s residence in Lourdes, France. 

The pope spent almost two hours with the victims, in a meeting reportedly only planned to last half that time. According to a Vatican press communique, the pope first met each survivor individually to hear their stories and proposals for addressing and preventing abuse, then spoke with the full group for about 30 minutes. Some of the survivors spoke to a limited group of French journalists after the meeting, saying that the pope was sincere and seemed committed to continuing to work towards prevention and justice for victims.

One of the survivors, Jérôme Guillement, said on French TV station LCI (La Chaîne Info) after the group’s meeting with the pope, “There was something sincere about him. With him, every word was chosen, every word had meaning….There was a lot of emotion.”

Speaking to the press next to Mr. Guillement, Olivier Mardi, another survivor and co-founder of the advocacy group Voix Libérées, said that Pope Leo came to the meetings already familiar with their cases. Mr. Mardi had said leading up to the event that he would not be “there to say what I suffered” at the hands of the French priest and serial abuser Father Bernard Tartu.

“[Pope Leo] had worked beforehand, and he is going to keep working afterward,” Mr. Mardi said. “I got the sense that he was a man of commitment, and also a determined man. He isn’t naive, and he knows that these things will continue and that we have to remain vigilant.”

Echoing Mr. Guillement, he said, “There was an emotional side to him, and at the same time something very powerful when he speaks.”

The survivors in the meeting were four men and three women, two of whom chose to remain anonymous. They were accompanied by Bishop Gérard Le Stang of Amiens, who heads the French bishops’ conference’s council on preventing the sexual abuse of minors.

The Vatican said that Pope Leo, speaking with the group, “reaffirm[ed] his commitment to ensuring that the evil they had experienced would not be repeated for others” and said that he hoped to work with the victims “so that the community of the faithful may increasingly be a place where men and women of every age can find comfort and healing.”

Mr. Mardi said that the pope “responded very well to our concrete proposals. He knows he has to work with us.”

Mr. Guillement said of his own conversation with the pope, “We talked about prevention, within a broader effort to build a culture of prevention at every level.” He said that the pope acknowledged that there is still a systemic problem in how the church handles abuse, and that the pope “felt that the church in France still had an enormous amount of work to do.”

The Vatican said that the pope asked the survivors to pray for him, and that he prayed with some of them during the individual meetings.

Speaking in a closed-door meeting with the French bishops this morning, Pope Leo urged the bishops to “continue along the path already begun” on responding to the clerical sexual abuse crisis, “maintaining the greatest vigilance.”

He praised the bishops’ efforts thus far, saying “you have confronted with determination the painful scourge of abuse of minors committed by members of the clergy or within an ecclesial context. You have taken courageous measures to respond to it through listening, the search for truth, justice, forgiveness, reparation and a firm commitment to a culture of prevention and protection against these crimes. I thank you for what you have done.”

He also encouraged them not to be “discouraged by the errors, inconsistencies or even falls that have marked the history” of French Catholicism. “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, who knows his sheep and calls each one by name.”

Immediately after the bishops’ meeting this morning, Pope Leo had celebrated an outdoor Mass at the sanctuary of Lourdes, preaching on the need for penance and conversion. “This call to conversion also concerns the church herself as she makes her earthly journey,” he said. “She must have the courage to begin with herself. In order to heal the deep wounds, infidelities and painful errors that have occurred within her, we must humbly place ourselves under the Lord’s purifying gaze. Recognizing our own faults is essential to our spiritual growth.”

After his meeting this evening with abuse survivors, the pope went to a solemn candlelight procession from the Grotto of Lourdes to the front of its basilica, where he continued the prayer service against the backdrop of beige panels that the diocese had mounted ahead of the trip over mosaics designed by Father Marko Rupnik.

Father Rupnik, a priest and former Jesuit who was accused of spiritual and sexual abuse by more than 20 women, is currently on trial in the Vatican. The local bishop said his decision to cover the mosaics ahead of the papal visit was personally supported by Pope Leo.

Colleen Dulle is the Vatican Correspondent at America and co-hosts the "Inside the Vatican" podcast. She is the author of Struck Down, Not Destroyed: Keeping the Faith as a Vatican Reporter (Image, 2025).