LOURDES, FRANCE, Sept 27 (Reuters) – Pope Leo exhorted the Catholic Church this Sunday to acknowledge its own faults and to heal the “deep wounds” inflicted within its ranks, a few hours before meeting with abuse victims committed by priests in France.
Addressing a crowd stretching across a large field near the famous Catholic shrine of Lourdes, Leo said that the Church must have the courage to face its past, but did not directly reference the abuse scandals in France that stirred nationwide response.
“To heal the deep wounds, the infidelities, and the painful errors that occurred within (the Church), we must humbly place ourselves under the purifying gaze of the Lord,” said the first North American pope to about 150,000 people gathered in the field on a sunny day.
Leo is making a four-day whirlwind visit to three cities in France, where once again he called on the world to rethink the development of artificial intelligence. He drew about 800,000 people to an outdoor Mass on the Champs-Élysées, in Paris, on Saturday.
Church leaders in the region hope he will help restore the institution’s reputation after a 2021 report revealed that about 330,000 French children were victims of abuse by Catholic clerics and lay leaders over seven decades.
In a prior closed-door meeting with French bishops on Sunday, Leo referred directly to the “painful scourge of abuse committed against minors by members of the clergy,” according to a text released by the Vatican.
The pope thanked the bishops for the “courageous measures” that, according to him, were taken to confront the scandals. Leo urged them to redouble their protection efforts and to “stay the course, with maximum vigilance.”
SKEPTICISM
Leo had already apologized directly for the abuse scandals that damaged the Church’s credibility worldwide. On a trip to Spain in June, he told local bishops that they should listen to the victims and offer them reparations.
The pope is set to meet in a closed-door session with seven French victims of clerical abuse later on Sunday. Some survivors said they doubt the meeting would lead to rapid changes by the Church.
“I am quite skeptical about the possibility of the pope resolving the issue, at least not immediately,” Michèle Le Reun-Gaigné, co-president of a survivors’ association in western France, told Reuters.
“Things are moving very slowly,” she said. “This will not happen overnight.”
Bishop Pierre-Antoine Bozo, spokesman for the French bishops, said that the pope’s desire to hold the meeting “shows that we cannot ignore this issue and that it must remain among our concerns.”
The pope’s schedule in France includes six events in Lourdes, a town at the foot of the Pyrenees that draws about 3 million pilgrims per year for visits to a shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary and to the claimed healing waters of the spring.
The site is also tied to a scandal that has troubled the Vatican in recent years. The shrine’s façade displays a series of mosaics by Father Marko Rupnik, a prominent religious artist with ties to the Vatican, who has been accused of sexual abuse.
Rupnik, accused by more than 20 women, had not publicly spoken out about the allegations. Five women who accuse him wrote an open letter to the pope on Thursday, sharply criticizing the cleric’s ongoing proceedings at the Vatican.
The mosaics, spanning several floors, were covered for the pope’s visit with large soft-yellow tarps. Upon arriving for the Mass on Sunday, Leo was driven in his open papamobile close to the shrine’s façade and the covered mosaics.
The pope, who on Friday vehemently reiterated the Catholic opposition to assisted-dying initiatives — two months after France created the legal right to die for people with incurable diseases — again mentioned the Church’s pro-life stance in Lourdes.
While meeting with volunteers who assist sick pilgrims in the hope of finding a miracle in the shrine’s waters, Leo urged them to remember the “deep meaning” of working in the health-care field.
“That means caring for a person who suffers, not eliminating them,” the pope said. “Medicine must never become the servant of planned death!”
(Reporting by Joshua McElwee; additional reporting by Elizabeth Pineau and Makini Brice)
