Pope Leo XIV will meet with survivors of clergy sexual abuse during a four-day visit to France in late September, the Vatican announced on Friday, adding that the victims themselves will be involved in preparing for the encounter. The timing and precise location of the meeting will be confirmed at a later date. The visit, scheduled for September 25–28, will be the pontiff's fourth foreign trip of the year and marks a significant moment for France, where a landmark independent report in 2021 estimated that some 330,000 children had been sexually abused over seven decades by Catholic Church personnel.

For French abuse survivors, the announcement carries deep symbolic weight. Némès Ehongo-Grasset, a survivor of Notre-Dame de Bétharram — a Catholic school in southwestern France where generations of children suffered rape and physical punishment through the late twentieth century — said he hopes the Pope will demonstrate that he has "truly grasped the scale of the problem." His victims' collective had requested a meeting with Leo as early as May, but until now had received no response from the Holy See, despite the headquarters of the Bétharram congregation being located at the Vatican. Ehongo-Grasset acknowledged the announcement as progress, saying that "all acts, at the highest level, that move toward recognition of victims already represent a step forward," while adding that he remains uncertain whether he will attend in person.

The meeting with survivors fits a pattern Leo has established since taking office. During a recent trip to Spain, he met with six abuse victims at a time when the Spanish Catholic hierarchy had only lately begun confronting its own legacy of abuse and cover-up. Last month, Leo further signalled his commitment to child protection by appointing French Bishop Thibault Verny to head the Vatican's child protection advisory commission.

The France trip will be dense with symbolism and diplomacy. Leo will begin in Paris on September 25, meeting President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace before addressing authorities, civil society and diplomats, and then delivering a speech at the headquarters of UNESCO, the United Nations cultural agency. He will celebrate evening prayers at Notre-Dame Cathedral — the medieval Gothic landmark recently restored after a devastating 2019 fire — and lead a prayer vigil with young people at the national stadium. The following day centres on social inclusion, with visits to an integration support centre and a synodal assembly of laypeople, before he travels to Lourdes, one of Catholicism's most revered pilgrimage sites in the foothills of the Pyrenees, for prayer and a torchlight procession. The visit concludes in Metz, a city near the borders of Luxembourg and Germany, with an interreligious meeting held in a conference centre named after Robert Schuman, the French statesman considered one of the founding fathers of European integration.

The trip underscores a broader shift in papal engagement with Europe. Unlike his predecessor Francis, who largely avoided major European capitals during his twelve-year pontificate and never made a state visit to Paris, Leo appears intent on engaging directly with the experience of European Catholics — and confronting some of the Church's most painful unresolved legacies.