Pope Leo XIV held a private, emotionally charged two-hour meeting with seven survivors of clerical sexual abuse on Sunday during his visit to Lourdes, the pilgrimage town in southwestern France, pledging renewed commitment to reform and acknowledging that abuse within the Church has a "systemic" dimension beyond individual wrongdoing.

The Vatican said the pope "thanked them for their painful testimony and reaffirmed his commitment to ensuring that the harm they experienced is not repeated for others." Survivors, speaking at a news conference afterwards, described the encounter as deeply moving. "When he saw the state I was in, he took me into his arms," said Jean-Marie Delbos, who was abused as a pupil at the nearby Notre-Dame de Betharram boarding school, where staff have faced accusations of physical and sexual abuse spanning several decades. Another survivor, Jérôme Guillement, said the pope grasped the structural nature of the problem: "From his point of view, the perpetrators are individuals, but what allows it to continue is the systemic dimension within the institution." This private acknowledgement stood in contrast to his tone at the Mass earlier in the day — attended by an estimated 150,000 worshippers on the meadow beside the Lourdes shrine — where he called on the Church to face its past with courage but stopped short of a direct apology, a distinction that left at least one survivor initially unsettled.

Earlier on Sunday, Leo also addressed French bishops behind closed doors, urging them to "maintain the greatest vigilance" and to persevere in confronting what he called the "scourge" of abuse of minors. The meeting's text was later released by the Vatican. The tone of his public remarks, however, drew some criticism: Leo praised the "determination" of French bishops in handling abuse cases, a framing that one Spanish outlet noted appeared to signal a desire to turn the page rather than deepen accountability.

The backdrop to Leo's visit is stark. A landmark 2021 independent inquiry found that approximately 330,000 children had been abused by Catholic clergy or lay Church members in France over seven decades — one of the largest such estimates anywhere in the world. The crisis is not uniquely French: abuse scandals have shaken the Church globally since investigative reporting in the United States in the early 2000s prompted disclosures across Ireland, the UK, and beyond. Leo's predecessor Pope Francis convened an unprecedented Vatican summit on the issue and revised Church law to explicitly criminalise sexual abuse, yet survivors and advocates say enforcement remains inconsistent.

Survivors left Sunday's meeting cautiously hopeful but insistent on concrete results. "I do indeed believe there is hope — hope that there can be change and truly listening to us at a deep level, rather than just superficially, with beautiful words that are never followed by any real action," said survivor Véronique Garnier. The visit to Lourdes, which draws millions of Catholic pilgrims each year seeking healing, forms the final leg of Leo's four-day apostolic journey to France — a trip that has also included a Mass drawing an estimated 700,000 to 800,000 people in Paris, a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron, and an address to UNESCO on the risks of artificial intelligence.