The five victims of child sexual abuse who met with Pope Francis on Sunday morning included some who had been abused by relatives or educators, not Roman Catholic clergy — a deliberate decision made to show that the church is taking a “larger perspective” on the problem of sexual abuse, said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman.

Victims of clergy sex abuse and their advocates saw something less benign at work: a subtle but unmistakable effort by the Vatican to shift the terms of the debate, to show “that it’s not always the church’s fault,” as Marci A. Hamilton, a law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University who has represented hundreds of victims of clerical sexual abuse, put it.

Church officials have argued that sexual abuse of children is not confined to the Catholic Church, pointing out that it infects other institutions and other religions as well. The pope may not have explicitly said the same, the advocates said, but the meeting’s inclusion of people abused by teachers and relatives as well as priests spoke volumes.

“He almost seems to be trying to deflect attention somewhere else,” said Barbara Blaine, the president of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, the country’s most prominent support and advocacy group for victims of clergy sexual abuse. “Of course those who are sexually violated suffer horribly, regardless of who the perpetrator is. But the problem that we see is that we think Pope Francis has both the authority and the responsibility to stop the sexual violence in the church, and he’s failing to do that.”