Pope Leo XIV to meet clergy abuse victims during September France visit

Vatican announces private meeting with abuse victims

Pope Leo XIV will meet privately with victims of sexual abuse by Catholic Church members during his September 25-28 apostolic trip to France, the Holy See Press Office announced on Friday, August 7, 2026, alongside the official itinerary. The Vatican said the victims themselves will participate in preparing the meeting, with further details to follow. RFI, citing the Vatican, reported that the encounter will take place on September 27 in Lourdes, though other outlets said timing and location were pending. ABC noted that the meeting is not part of the official published agenda and that French bishops had already signaled it in early July.

The announcement responds in part to a request from the main collective of victims from the Catholic school of Notre-Dame de Bétharram in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, about 15 km from Lourdes. The group, comprising over 200 victims of physical and sexual abuse, wrote in late May to the French Bishops' Conference and the Diocese of Tarbes requesting "a brief audience, in a spirit of prayer, blessing and truth." The collective had received no response from the papacy before the announcement, despite the congregation's headquarters being at the Vatican.

The scale of abuse in France

The October 2021 CIASE report estimated that 330,000 minors were victims of sexual violence in institutions linked to the Catholic Church. ABC, citing the same report, gave a figure of 216,000 minors sexually abused by priests and religious between 1950 and 2020.

Némès Ehongo-Grasset, a victim from Notre-Dame de Bétharram, told RFI he hopes Leo XIV will demonstrate that he has truly grasped the scale of the problem.

“All the acts, at the highest level, that go in the direction of recognizing the victims, represent already a step.”

He added that the Church must begin to seek the solution at the highest level, and said he was not yet sure whether he would attend the September meeting. Loup Besmond de Senneville, editor-in-chief of Catholic newspaper La Croix, told ABC the 2021 report was "an enormous bomb" that revealed problems now on the way to resolution.

Four-day itinerary across France

Leo will begin September 25 in Paris, meeting President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace before addressing authorities, civil society and the diplomatic corps. He will then speak at UNESCO headquarters, celebrate vespers at Notre-Dame Cathedral, and end the day with a prayer vigil with young people at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis.

On September 26, the pope will visit the Maison Bakhita center for social support and integration, followed by a meeting with a synodal assembly involving laypeople and recently baptized Catholics. He will then travel to Lourdes, where he will pray at the Grotto of the Apparitions and meet staff and sick people at Accueil Notre-Dame. On September 27, he will address French bishops in Lourdes and hold the private meeting with abuse victims. The trip closes on September 28 with an interreligious meeting in Metz.

The pope's 2026 travel schedule

The France trip, confirmed in May, will be Leo's fourth foreign voyage of 2026. He made a day trip to Monaco in March, visited four African nations in April, and traveled to Spain and the Canary Islands in June. The Vatican also confirmed this week that his first trip to Latin America as pontiff will take place in November, with visits to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, where he served for over three decades.

Leo met with six abuse survivors during his Spain trip in June, promising additional efforts and a more effective response to what he called the "scourge" of sexual violence within the Church. Last month, he appointed French Bishop Thibault Verny to head the Vatican's child protection advisory commission. France has not received an official papal visit since Benedict XVI in 2008. Pope Francis visited three times for specific events (Strasbourg 2014, Marseille 2023, Corsica 2024), but none was considered a full apostolic trip. The French Bishops' Conference expects hundreds of thousands of participants, with free admission requiring advance registration opening Monday.