San Francisco Frontiers - Pope promises French sex abuse victims to prevent further harm

The leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics was on the first official papal visit to France, a secular country with deep Catholic roots, in nearly two decades.

The pontiff on the third of a four-day visit in the pilgrimage town of Lourdes privately met seven abuse victims, now adults, after promising to further efforts to reform the Church in the wake of the global sexual abuse scandal.

Among them was Jean-Marie Delbos, 80, who was abused as a pupil at the nearby boarding school of Notre-Dame de Betharram, where staff have been accused of physical and sexual abuse over several decades.

"When he saw the state I was in, he took me into his arms," Delbos told journalists after.

"It was an extraordinary moment," said the man, who described himself as having lost all faith after the abuse.

A 2021 inquiry found that clergy or lay members of the Church had abused about 330,000 minors in France over 70 years.

- 'Systemic' -

Jerome Guillement, who has written about a priest abusing him as a teenager, said the pontiff understood the "systemic" character of sexual abuse in the Church.

"From his point of view, the perpetrators are individuals, but what allows it to continue is the systemic dimension within the institution," he said.

The first US pontiff thanked the victims "for their painful testimony and reaffirmed his commitment to do everything possible to ensure that the harm they suffered is not repeated for others", the Vatican said.

He also expressed "his hope of being able to work together".

Pope Leo earlier urged bishops in another private meeting to continue fighting sexual and physical violence.

"You have faced with determination the painful scourge of abuse of minors committed by members of the clergy or within an ecclesial context," he said, according to a copy of his speech released to the press.

"It is important to persevere along the path you have begun."

- 'False compassion' -

Catholic tradition says the Virgin Mary appeared to a peasant girl in a grotto in Lourdes in 1858, and the modern-day sanctuary is one of the most important Catholic holy sites in the world.

The southwestern town receives some three million pilgrims each year, and believers credit it with miraculous healings.

On Sunday morning, hymns rang out in a packed field near the sanctuary after Pope Leo blessed the faithful with holy water.

Among the crowd, 54-year-old Jerome Vion said he approved of the pontiff's attention to victims of clerical abuse.

"It is his role as a spiritual master to guide this Church," he said.

Domitille Bardoul, 26, said it was "very beautiful" the pope was going to listen to victims.

She said it was "a way of acknowledging that every possible measure is being taken to prevent this kind of abuse".

Leo is the third pope to visit Lourdes after Benedict XVI in 2008 and Jean-Paul II in 1983 and 2004.

Addressing sick pilgrims on Sunday, Leo rejected assisted dying, after the French parliament in June legalised the practice for certain adults suffering from an incurable condition.

"We must reject the temptation to cause death under the guise of false compassion," he said.

"What is legal is not necessarily moral."

On his final day in France on Monday, Leo he heads to the northeastern city of Metz near the German border where he is expected to discuss hopes for peace in Europe.

burs-ah/tw

E.Jones--SFF