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Pope Leo XIV met privately with five survivors of clerical sexual abuse in Buenos Aires on Monday, the second day of his historic visit to Argentina, as part of a series of such meetings planned throughout his 12-day tour of Latin America.
The Vatican said the pope spoke individually with each survivor, listening to accounts of their experiences and to their proposals for improving the Church’s response to abuse. “The Pope spoke individually with each of them, listened to their words and to the painful stories of their experiences, as well as to their proposals for strengthening paths towards healing within the Church,” the Vatican said in a statement.
The closed-door sessions, which lasted more than an hour in total, followed a large open-air mass on Avenida del Libertador at the Monumento de los Españoles that drew an estimated 2.5 million people — the country’s first papal liturgy in nearly 40 years, since Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1987.
Safeguarding pledge
During the meetings, Leo, 71, reiterated his commitment to strengthening safeguarding within the Catholic Church. The Holy See Press Office said in October that the meetings were intended to express the pope’s “closeness to those who have suffered”, build paths to healing and ensure the Church becomes a safe and “spiritually healthy” institution.
Leo, the first pope born in the United States, has made meetings with abuse survivors a consistent feature of his foreign visits. Before his election as pontiff, he served as president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, giving him longstanding ties to the region he is now touring.
The scale of clerical abuse documented globally lends weight to the symbolic significance of such encounters. A 2021 independent inquiry estimated approximately 216,000 victims of the French Catholic Church’s clergy between 1950 and 2020. Earlier research counted more than 10,600 people abused by Catholic priests in the United States between 1950 and 2002. A 2019 German study found 6,875 victims of Catholic clergy, religious and lay church workers in Australia between 1980 and 2015.
Tour itinerary
Argentina is the second stop on Leo’s three-country itinerary, which began in Uruguay and will conclude in Peru. The Buenos Aires meetings with survivors are the first of several such sessions the Vatican says the pope intends to hold with victims before the tour ends.