VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
Le Monde [Paris, France]
April 21, 2025
By Gaétan Supertino
“It has been one of the greatest challenges facing the Church of our time,” wrote Pope Francis, who died on April 21 at the age of 88, in a text made public on June 15, 2023. At the time, he had just written a letter to Bolivian president Luis Arce, expressing his “pain and feelings of shame and dismay,” following revelations in the local press of dozens of sexual assaults committed by a priest in the country. Despite the unprecedented nature of the move – a pope writing to a head of state about a sex scandal – the matter caused only a limited stir. In France, for instance, there was hardly any media coverage. At the time, there was an all-too-familiar, sad sense of déjà-vu.
From the United States to Australia, via Germany, France, Ireland, Portugal, Belgium, Chile, Argentina, Mexico and Colombia, Francis saw scandals erupt almost everywhere in the Catholic world in just over 10 years as pontiff. There have been hundreds of thousands of cases involving pedophilia, sexual violence against women or men, coercion and manipulation committed by clergy or religious figures. The vast majority of these cases do not date back to Francis’ pontificate, or even to the 21st century. However, it was under his…