Pope meets with survivors of clergy abuse in Argentina as it reckons with legacy and ongoing cases

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Pope Leo XIV met with survivors of clergy abuse on Monday during his visit to Argentina, a country that has been reckoning with the Catholic Church’s legacy of sex abuse and cover-up, including in cases in which the Argentine Pope Francis intervened.

The Vatican said Leo spent about an hour meeting individually, and then as a group, with five victims of abuse by clergy and “church institutions” who were chosen by the local church. The meeting took place at the Catholic University of Argentina.

Leo listened to their “painful stories and proposals to consolidate paths of healing in the church,” said a statement from Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni.

Acknowledging that there were other groups of victims who had wanted to meet with Leo, “the pope expressed his closeness and desire to reinforce paths of protection, of welcome and accompaniment in the church,” it said.

Victims groups had said they wanted to meet with Leo and were denied, including a group of 43 women who allege they were subjected to human trafficking and forced labor at centers of the conservative group Opus Dei in Argentina.

Their allegations implicate senior members of Opus, some of whom have been formally accused in a criminal investigation into the women's claims. Prosecutors have requested that the members be summoned for questioning, but the judge has not ordered it. Opus has denied wrongdoing.

Given the ongoing criminal investigation, it is perhaps unlikely that Leo would have intervened by meeting with them in this case. However, in general, the American pope has followed in the footsteps of Francis and to a lesser extent Pope Benedict XVI by meeting with abuse survivors on his foreign trips, and another meeting is expected when he arrives later this week in Peru.

Ahead of the Argentine visit, survivors had also demanded stronger action from the Vatican against those accused or convicted in criminal courts but whose fates within the church’s internal legal processes haven’t been made public.

Survivors’ groups have cited several high-profile priests convicted of serious crimes, including Julio Grassi and former Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta . Francis intervened in both cases in favor of the priests who were subsequently convicted by criminal courts.

Grassi, once a prominent figure who ran homes for orphaned children, is serving a 15-year sentence for sexually abusing a minor. Francis, who at the time was still Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio and the archbishop of Buenos Aires, in 2010 commissioned a four-volume, 2,000-plus-page forensic study of Grassi’s case that concluded he was innocent , that his victims were lying and that the case never should have gone to trial.

Zanchetta, a former bishop close to Francis, was sentenced in 2022 to 4 1/2 years in prison for sexually abusing two seminarians. He was granted parole in 2025, prompting renewed demands that he be defrocked. Francis had initially rejected the accusations against Zanchetta and created a job for him at the Vatican that got him out of Argentina. The late pope eventually authorized a canonical criminal proceeding against Zanchetta in 2019, but the Vatican has not publicly announced a ruling.

The Vatican tends to not initiate canonical trials until all criminal appeals are exhausted, to not prejudge the outcomes, though it does recommend that bishops take precautionary measures during investigations such as removing priests from active ministry.

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