Pope Leo XIV will meet privately with survivors of clerical sexual abuse during a four-day visit to France next month. On Friday, the Vatican published the itinerary for the 25–28 September trip – the first papal state visit to the country since Benedict XVI visited in 2008.
The Holy See said the survivors themselves would help prepare the encounter, with the time and place to be confirmed later, according to Associated Press.
The meeting follows Leo's recent trip to Spain, where he met six abuse victims and pledged that the Church would step up efforts to tackle abuse.
The issue remains raw in France, where a landmark 2021 inquiry estimated that some 330,000 minors had been abused by clergy or lay Church workers over seven decades.
Last month the pontiff appointed French bishop Thibault Verny to lead the Vatican's child protection commission, a move that keeps the issue high on the Vatican’s agenda.
In May, a group representing victims from a Catholic school near Lourdes asked for an audience with the pope to present reform proposals.
Leo, the first American pope, elected in May 2025, will begin the visit in Paris on 25 September, meeting President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace and addressing UNESCO headquarters before celebrating vespers at Notre-Dame Cathedral and holding an evening vigil with young people at the Stade de France.
The following day, devoted to social inclusion and people preparing to enter the Church, includes a stop at the Maison Bakhita integration centre and an open-air mass at Place de la Concorde, expected to draw hundreds of thousands.
He then travels to Lourdes, one of Catholicism's foremost pilgrimage sites, where he will pray at the Grotto of the Apparitions, meet sick pilgrims and their carers, and join the sanctuary's traditional torchlight rosary procession before Sunday's open-air mass.
The trip concludes on 28 September in Metz, near the borders with Luxembourg and Germany, with an interreligious gathering at a conference centre named after Robert Schuman, the French statesman and Catholic considered a founding father of European integration.
The visit – Leo's fourth foreign journey this year, ahead of a November tour of Uruguay, Argentina and Peru – highlights his growing engagement with Europe's historically Catholic but increasingly secular societies, marking a shift in emphasis from Pope Francis, who devoted much of his papacy to countries on the Church's geographical and social margins.
(with newswires)
