Pope urges French bishops to ‘persevere’ against clerical sex abuse

LOURDES

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Pope Leo XIV yesterday urged French bishops to keep battling the “scourge” of clerical sex abuse during a trip to France, after repeated accusations against the Church in recent years.

The leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics was on a four-day trip to France, a secular country with deep Catholic roots, marking the first official papal visit there in nearly two decades.

“You have faced with determination the painful scourge of abuse of minors committed by members of the clergy or within an ecclesial context,” he told the bishops during a private meeting in the pilgrimage town of Lourdes, according to a copy of his speech released to the press.

“It is important to persevere along the path you have begun, maintaining the greatest vigilance.”

A 2021 inquiry found that clergy or lay members of the Church had abused about 330,000 minors in France over 70 years.

The first U.S. pontiff later met privately with seven of the victims, now adults, after promising to further efforts to reform the Church in the wake of the global sexual abuse scandal.

Catholic tradition says the Virgin Mary appeared to a peasant girl in a grotto in Lourdes in 1858, and believers credit the modern-day sanctuary with miraculous healings.

It is one of the most important Catholic holy sites in the world, receiving some 3 million pilgrims each year.