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Pope Leo XIV stops to view a memorial plaque for victims of clerical sexual abuse at Lourdes Sept. 27, 2026, ahead of a meeting with the French Bishops Conference at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes during his apostolic journey to France. (OSV News photo/Simone Risoluti, Vatican Media)

Pope Leo to meet with abuse victims during Latin America visit, Vatican says


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OSV News Filed Under: Feature, News, Vatican, World News

(OSV News) — The Vatican confirmed that Pope Leo XIV will meet with victims of clergy sexual abuse in Latin America.

In an Oct. 27 statement, the Vatican press office said that “several meetings” were planned with “victims of abuse by members of the clergy and the Church” during his Nov. 6-17 visit to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru.

“These meetings reflect the pope’s desire to express his closeness to those who have suffered and continue to suffer from this violence, to build with them healing paths accessible to anyone in need, and to ensure that the Church is a safe and spiritually healthy place, one that lives and communicates the Gospel,” the statement read.

The announcement came one day after Red de Sobrevivientes Peru (Survivors Network Peru), a victims’ advocacy association, released an open letter from victims and survivors who suffered abuse by members of the now-suppressed lay movement, Sodalitium Christianae Vitae.

The association was founded by José Enrique Escardó, the first member of Sodalitium Christianae Vitae to denounce the abuse he suffered at the hands of the late Germán Doig, co-founder of Sodalitium.

Although the group thanked the late Pope Francis for suppressing the movement in 2025, it expressed concern that Pope Leo’s schedule included no meetings with victims.

Following the Vatican’s announcement, the group posted a statement on X Oct. 27, saying they were pleased that Pope Leo “will meet with victims of church abuse.”

“What we would not welcome is seeing them vetted, as was done in Spain. Victims want changes in the Catholic Church, not photo ops,” the group said, referring to several survivors who accused the Spanish bishops’ conference of selecting the survivors who participated in Church abuse prevention programs to meet with Pope Leo during his visit to the country in June.

Yago de la Cierva, a layman and general coordinator of the pope’s visit to Spain, denied the allegation that certain survivors were excluded, telling OSV News in June that it was “a blatant lie.”

“Survivors who met Pope Leo were chosen by the Archdiocese of Madrid, the interdiocesan center for the protection of minors and by the ombudsman himself,” de la Cierva said, mentioning the government representative who led the government’s investigation.

Although the Vatican has said Pope Leo will have several meetings with survivors, it did not specify when or in which of the three countries he is set to visit will those meetings take place.

— ‘He just helped’ —

The pope played a significant role in the Sodalitium case, particularly when he served as bishop of Chiclayo.

Although Escardo first revealed abuses in the lay movement more than two decades ago, the case gained prominence after the 2015 publication of “Mitad Monjes, Mitad Soldados” (“Half Monks, Half Soldiers”).

Written by Peruvian journalist Paola Ugaz along with survivor and fellow journalist Pedro Salinas, the book detailed the alleged psychological and sexual abuse, as well as corporal punishment and extreme exercises within Sodalitium.

Since 2018, Ugaz and Salinas have faced a smear campaign they attributed to Sodalitium, including lawsuits and the publication of materials intended to discredit their work.

In a 2025 interview with OSV News, Ugaz said the pope, as bishop of Chiclayo, “had supported us quietly — not in front of the cameras — since 2018. He never did it for recognition. He just helped. He was always there.”

Ugaz said that during his time leading the Diocese of Chiclayo, then-Bishop Prevost was among a handful of bishops in the country who stood by her and Salinas, as well as the victims of Sodalitium, as the group used questionable and unethical methods to silence them.

While “in Peru, abusers and the powerful usually get away with it,” Ugaz told OSV News that in her particular case, justice came from outside, “not because the country suddenly realized the Sodalitium had abused its members, stolen land from farmers and had gone after journalists. No. Justice came thanks to the Church, not the courts.”

— Peru: Then-Bishop Robert Prevost’s reaction to a prominent abuse case —

Not long after the announcement of the May 8 election of Pope Leo, the Survivors Network of those Abused By Priests, or SNAP, issued a statement accusing the new pope of failing to act against abuse in a case in Chiclayo in 2022, when he served as bishop of the diocese, saying that then-Bishop Prevost allegedly failed to open an investigation and supposedly sending “inadequate information to Rome” in the abuse case of three women.

The group alleged that the priest was allowed to continue his ministry despite the accusations.

SNAP said it filed a complaint against then-Cardinal Prevost “under Pope Francis’ 2023 decree Vos estis lux mundi on March 25, 2025.”

The Diocese of Chiclayo denied the accusations made by SNAP, saying that then-Bishop Prevost met with the victims in April 2022, and subsequently removed the accused priest, suspended him from ministry and forwarded the results of the investigation to the Vatican.

“Every media outlet has been trying to discredit the cardinal, claiming he did nothing. That’s a lie. He has listened, he has respected the proceedings, and this process is still ongoing,” Bishop Edinson Farfán of Chiclayo said at a press conference in a town where now-Pope Leo was bishop, the Madrid-based news agency EFE reported May 10, 2025.

When asked about the accusations made by SNAP against Pope Leo, Ugaz said that while the victims’ stories of abuse are undeniable, the allegations of inaction were part of a smear campaign orchestrated by Sodalitium members who wished to discredit the former bishop after he stood by the movement’s victims.

Speaking to OSV News in May 2025, following the conclave, Father Hans Zollner, top expert on safeguarding and director of the Institute of Anthropology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, also suggested that the “allegations against then-Bishop Prevost were part of the campaign instigated by members of Sodalitium.”

“I have not seen any convincing proof or documentation that SNAP or (watchdog website) BishopAccountability or whoever produced in support of the allegations,” Father Zollner told OSV News.

— Papal meetings with individual survivors, not groups —

While Peruvian survivors were cautiously optimistic about the Vatican’s announcement of a meeting, in August, a prominent victims’ group in Argentina rejected Pope Leo’s visit to the country and declared that it would refuse any form of dialogue with the pope.

“If the network meets with church authorities, it will be in a court of law, where those responsible are tried and convicted for their crimes,” the Red de Sobrevivientes de Abusos Eclesiásticos de Argentina (Network of Survivors of Church Abuses in Argentina) said in its letter.

Like survivors in Peru, the Argentine survivors’ advocacy groups referenced Pope Leo’s visit to Spain, alleging that independent survivors’ groups were excluded from meeting with him.

The rule for papal meetings with survivors of abuse however, OSV News learned, is that the pope meets individuals, not groups, to allow the more personal form of close encounter.

French survivors of clergy sexual abuse who met with Pope Leo in Lourdes Sept. 27 said they were struck by the pontiff’s deep personal empathy and his frank acknowledgment of the institutional failures that allowed the crisis to fester within the Church.

Speaking at an invitation-only press conference in Lourdes following the audience, five of the seven survivors who took part — Véronique Garnier, Olivier Mardi, Jérôme Guillement, Bertrand Virieux and Jean-Marie Delbos — said the encounter shattered their expectations.

“When he saw what state I was in, he took me in both arms,” Delbos recalled. “I never imagined it would be the pope holding me. It was an extraordinary moment.”

— Reckoning in Argentina, Uruguay —

Argentina has been rocked by several major clergy abuse scandals that have led to criminal convictions and continued allegations of institutional cover-up.

Among the most prominent was that of the Antonio Provolo Institute for Deaf and Hearing Impaired Children, where several priests were accused of raping and assaulting deaf students.

Founded in Verona, Italy, in 1830 by Venerable Antonio Provolo, the institute established schools for the deaf around the world, including two in Argentina: the first in La Plata and the second in Mendoza.

Two priests, Italian Father Nicola Corradi and Argentine Father Horacio Corbacho, were each sentenced to more than 40 years in prison for sexually abusing an estimated 20 children at the Provolo Institute in Mendoza. Armando Gomez, a gardener at the institute, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for sexually abusing students.

All three were accused by 10 former students of 25 acts of aggravated sexual abuse that occurred between 2004 and 2016.

Another prominent scandal involved Father Julio César Grassi, a celebrity priest known for raising money for schools and orphanages, who was convicted of child abuse in 2009 after facing charges of abusing a young boy. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, a decision the Argentine Supreme Court upheld in 2017.

The Catholic Church in Uruguay was also rocked in the mid-1990s by a similar scandal involving a well-known priest, Salesian Father Adolfo Antelo, who often attracted young people and held Masses that were televised nationally.

Young men and women who once belonged to the lay association he founded, Comunidad Jerusalén, were subjected to physical, sexual and psychological abuse by Father Antelo. He was placed under house arrest in 1996 and the following year he died of lung cancer before a final sentence was issued.

In April 2016, the Uruguayan bishops’ conference issued a formal apology for decades of clergy sexual abuse that went unpunished due to expired statutes of limitations.

Several months later, the bishops presented the results of a dedicated hotline they established, saying it received 44 complaints against 40 priests and religious over 70 years. The bishops’ conference also said the complaints led to the removal of four priests from ministry.

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