Pope Leo XIV Meets Abuse Survivors in Lima and Tells the Church It Must Make Amends

On Thursday in Lima, during his homecoming to Peru, Pope Leo XIV turned to the hardest subject a shepherd can face. The Holy Father met with survivors of clergy sexual abuse and said the Catholic Church must make amends to those who were harmed, France 24 reported. Al Jazeera reported that six survivors took part in the meeting.

The pope framed the Church's duty in plain moral terms. He said the Church must confront sexual abuse committed by clergy with truth and justice, according to Al Jazeera. In a meeting with Peru's bishops, he told them to accompany their flocks and to respond to abuse victims with truth and justice, the Associated Press reported.

For many survivors, the meeting was a beginning, not an ending. Al Jazeera reported that while six survivors met the pope, hundreds more say they remain excluded as they seek justice. Their frustration deserves to be heard with respect. Behind every number is a person who trusted the Church and was betrayed by someone who claimed to speak for it.

Peru carries a particular wound. Days before the pope arrived, El País reported on the findings of a Vatican investigation into the Sodalitium, the now-defunct Catholic movement founded in Peru, which documented grave abuses against its members.

That detail matters. Amends are not only words. When a pope speaks of making amends, survivors and the faithful alike will look for concrete steps: an honest accounting of what happened, fair compensation for those who were harmed, and leaders who are held responsible when they failed to act.

Pope Leo knows Peru's dioceses from the inside. He spent years serving in the country and led the Diocese of Chiclayo as its bishop before he was called to Rome. His message to the bishops, as the AP reported it, joined two duties that belong together: stay close to the people, and meet victims with truth and justice.

Catholics have heard promises before, and some have grown weary. But the call itself is as old as the Gospel. Jesus warned that it would be better for a millstone to be hung around one's neck than to cause one of the little ones to stumble (Matthew 18:6). The prophet Ezekiel rebuked the shepherds who fed themselves instead of the flock (Ezekiel 34). A Church that takes those words seriously cannot treat abuse as a public relations problem. It has to treat it as a grave sin against the innocent and a crime that demands justice.

There is also a word here for the faithful who stay. The failures of some do not erase the faithfulness of countless priests, religious sisters and lay volunteers who serve the poor of Peru every day. Holding abusers and those who covered for them to account protects those good servants, too, and it protects the children who will grow up in the Church tomorrow.

The visit moves north on Friday to Chiclayo, the diocese the pope once led. The Vatican's program has him celebrating an open-air Mass at the Pampas de Pimentel, praying privately at a chapel dedicated to St. Óscar Romero, meeting clergy at the Shrine of Our Lady of Peace and speaking to students at Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo Catholic University.

On Saturday he is scheduled to crown a statue of the Immaculate Virgin at Chiclayo's cathedral, celebrate Mass in the Andean town of Santa Cruz de Succhabamba and close the Jubilee Year of St. Toribio de Mogrovejo at the saint's shrine. Sunday brings stops in Cusco, where he will lead the Angelus, and in the Amazon city of Pucallpa, where he is to meet missionaries and Amazonian peoples. He is due back in Rome on Nov. 17 after a final Mass in Lima.

For American Catholics, who lived through their own painful reckoning with abuse and cover-ups, the scene in Lima will feel familiar. The test of any reform is what happens after the cameras leave. Survivors in Peru have asked to be heard, and the pope has said the Church owes them amends. The faithful should pray for healing, for justice and for the courage of Church leaders to follow through on what was said this week.

Healing in the Church begins the same way it begins in any family: with the truth told plainly, wrongs set right and the wounded given a place at the table. Peru's Catholics welcomed their pope home with open arms. The survivors among them deserve no less.