Victims of Catholic Church Violence to Meet Pope Leo XIV

Seven victims of sexualised violence in the Catholic Church will meet Pope Leo XIV in Lourdes, France. Le Figaro reports. The church-initiated meeting will take place on September 27 during the pontiff’s visit to the country.

According to the newspaper, the event will be private. According to the participants of the meeting, their “readiness for dialogue does not mean readiness to accept” what happened to them. All seven were victims of sexualized violence as children and remained silent for years.

The meeting will be attended, in particular, by 80-year-old Jean-Marie Delbaud, who was one of the first to talk about violence in a Catholic boarding school, and 65-year-old Veronique Garnier, who published an autobiography with a story about violence in the church. According to the participants of the upcoming meeting, they do not pretend to represent all victims of violence. However, as Le Figaro notes, “the limited format of the event and the lack of transparency in the selection of participants have drawn criticism from victim protection organizations.”.

Ekaterina Naumova