VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
Crux [Denver CO]
June 22, 2025
By Christopher R. Altieri
Sexual abuse survivors presented more than thirty letters to Vatican officials last week, calling for reform of the Church’s practices and approach to accompaniment of victims at the outset of Pope Leo XIV’s reign.
Sara Larson, executive director of Awake! – a survivor outreach and advocacy organization based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – carried the letters to Rome, where she was a keynote speaker at the annual safeguarding conference of the Institute for Anthropology (IADC) at the Pontifical Gregorian University, which ran from June 17-20.
Letters of raw emotion, practical realism
Larson presented these letters to Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, head of the IADC, on June 17 and delivered copies to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors later in the week, with a request that they be passed to Leo.
The letters, excerpts of which are available on the Awake! website, are at once emotionally raw and powerfully lucid, combining both bracing frankness in discussion of the effects of abuse on victims and hard-nosed practicality when it comes to the urgently needful work of structural and cultural reform.
“Survivor engagement is not a courtesy—it is a moral necessity,” one survivor wrote. “Permanent Survivor Advisory Panels at diocesan and global levels can ensure accountability and transformation as part of the safeguarding ecosystem,” the survivor continued, noting as well how survivors “must be included at the start of the process.”
“Their truth-telling and resilience are vital to authentic reform,” the survivor wrote.
Another survivor wrote to Leo “not in anger, but in hope.”
“I’ve worked hard to reclaim my peace, and I’ve come to know that faith can still live—even if it has to rise from the ashes,” the survivor wrote. “I believe the Church can lead again, but only if it’s willing to listen.”
The change the survivor hopes to see “is a Church that stands with victims—not just in courtrooms, but in their lives.”
Crucial safeguarding role of women
The theme of the conference was “Women of Faith, Women of Strength” and the conference agenda focused not only on the phenomenon of abuse perpetrated against women and girls – which observers and advocates have decried for years as under-reported in both the Church and in the news media – but on the crucial role women play in the mission of safeguarding.
“We hope Pope Leo prioritizes the voices of abuse survivors in his response to this issue in the Church,” Larson told Crux.
“We desire a Church that is not silent, but is transparent, accountable, willing to listen to those who have been harmed, and take concrete action to respond to their concerns,” Larson said.
The safeguarding conference at the Gregorian took place in a moment of transition for the Church and for the Church’s Roman governing apparatus.
Safeguarding a challenge for Leo
Leo is less than two months into a pontificate that follows the turbulent twelve-year reign of Pope Francis, who earned a reputation for deep empathy with victims on a personal level, but also saw his pontificate dogged by persistent allegations of mismanagement of abuse cases.
The case of Father Marko Rupnik – a disgraced former Jesuit and celebrity mosaic artist accused of serial spiritual, psychological, and sexual abuse by dozens of victims, most of them women religious – is for ample good reason among the most watched cases pending before the discipline section of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The Rupnik case is unfinished business from the Francis pontificate. It was already identified by Church watchers as among the major tests for whomever the cardinals chose to succeed him. When Leo accepted his election, he inherited the Rupnik case and all its baggage.
“Justice for survivors includes psychological and spiritual support from the Church,” Larson said, noting that real support may begin with financial assistance to cover therapy costs but cannot end there.
“This means more than payment for mental health services,” Larson said, “but also a genuine desire to listen to survivors, allowing their voices to shape the Church’s prevention of and response to abuse.”
“Listening,” Larson said, “is an important first step, but listening is not enough. Listening must lead to real change.”
Leo’s own record of leadership on abuse and coverup is a mixed bag – something the of which the cardinals who elected him were keenly aware – with one case in Chicago mismanaged in the year 2000 and another tenaciously pursued and adroitly handled both when he was a bishop in Peru and when he was cardinal prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops in the Vatican.
Leo was also accused of mismanaging another case, but was thoroughly vetted by ecclesiastical and civil authorities, as well as the press, and exonerated.
Vatican watchers have suggested the cardinals chose Leo because of what is known of his record, rather than despite it, knowing that the man they chose would face careful scrutiny.
In a 2023 interview with Vatican Media when he had been called to Rome to head the powerful Dicastery for Bishops, which helps the pope choose bishops for dioceses around the world and also handles disputes and some disciplinary issues, then-Archbishop Robert Prevost (now Leo XIV) acknowledged the cultural challenges of safeguarding.
“In some countries, the taboo of talking about the subject has already been broken somewhat,” he said, “while there are other places where victims, or victims’ families, would never want to talk about the abuse they have suffered.”
“In any case,” said then-Archbishop Prevost, “silence is not an answer.”
“Silence is not the solution,” he said. “We must be transparent and honest, we must accompany and assist the victims, because otherwise their wounds will never heal.”
“There is,” he said, “a great responsibility in this, for all of us.”
Larson said those 2023 remarks of the man who has become Pope Leo XIV were part of what inspired the letters she delivered.
“We hope that Pope Leo will speak strongly and frequently about the ongoing problem of abuse in the Church,” Larson said, “and hold all bishops accountable when they fail to meet their obligations to protect and care for their people.”