Pope Leo XIV held a two-hour meeting with seven abuse victims at the bishop’s residence in Lourdes on September 27.
“The Pope met each of them individually and in private, listening to their stories, to the pain and suffering they had endured—sometimes, sadly, with the complicity or silence of those who could have helped them—and to their proposals to ensure that this does not happen again,” the Holy See Press Office said in a statement. “He spent a few moments in prayer with some of them.”