Pope Leo urges healing of ‘deep wounds’ before meeting child sexual abuse survivors in France

Catholic church must reckon with its ‘painful errors’, pontiff tells crowd in Lourdes during four-day tour

The pope has called on the Catholic church to heal “deep wounds” and “painful errors”, before a meeting with survivors of child sexual abuse as he continues his four-day visit to France.

Addressing a crowd in a large field near the Catholic shrine of Lourdes on Sunday, Pope Leo XIV called on the church to reckon with its past, without directly referencing sexual abuse scandals in France that affected at least 330,000 children over seven decades.