Pope to meet victims of clerical sex abuse on France trip

Pope Leo XIV is on a four-day official visit to France, the first papal trip in nearly two decades. He arrived in Lourdes on Saturday evening and met hundreds of thousands of worshippers at an open-air mass on Sunday.

The Pope is set to meet privately with seven victims of clerical sex abuse in Lourdes. According to a 2021 inquiry, clergy or lay members of the Church had abused about 330,000 people as minors in France over 70 years. One of the victims meeting the Pope is a former pupil of the Notre-Dame de Betharram institution, a boarding school at the centre of widespread accusations of physical and sexual abuse.

The Pope's visit comes as the Church faces scrutiny over its handling of the global sexual abuse scandal. The meeting with victims is seen as an effort to further reform the Church and acknowledge the suffering of survivors.

Brief written by urgent.news from Punch Nigeria, South China Morning Post, The Local France, Le Monde English, Malay Mail — 5 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.