For a pope visiting France, the easy part comes first: vast crowds, outdoor altars, the theatre of a Mass. The harder part is a room with seven chairs. Pope Leo XIV met seven survivors of sexual abuse by clergy for two hours in Lourdes on September 27th, in what officials described as an emotional encounter, the Vatican said. He thanked them “for their painful testimony” and “reaffirmed his commitment” to ending harm by Catholic priests.
The meeting, held at the bishop’s residence in Lourdes, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, came on the second leg of a four-day visit to France, after enormous crowds in Paris. As rews reported when the trip began, the record-setting Paris Mass was always going to be followed by this more uncomfortable appointment at the shrine, one of Catholicism’s most visited. The pontiff, who leads the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, has described clerical abuse as an open wound.
The audience was watched closely, and not only by the faithful. According to America Magazine, the seven survivors met Pope Leo privately, away from the pilgrimage crowds that fill Lourdes year-round. France matters on this question: its bishops were once at the forefront of the church’s reckoning, publicly acknowledging the systemic nature of the abuse, though survivors’ associations now accuse them of backsliding, Le Monde notes.
Meetings of this sort have become a fixture of papal travel, and therein lies the sceptics’ case: listening sessions are plentiful, structural consequences rarer. A pledge of commitment, however sincerely reaffirmed, is cheap to give. What the seven survivors in Lourdes made of their two hours is not yet public; what the pope does about the wound he names will be watched far longer than any homily. The applause in Paris was easy to earn. Lourdes is where the bill is presented.