(SPAIN)
Global Catholic [Hong Kong]
September 18, 2026
A victim of Church sexual abuse in Spain, never answered after requesting an audience with Pope Leo XIV, asks why some survivors are received while others are met with silence.
Just a few months ago, I publicly wrote a letter during Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Spain. I did so as a victim of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church and as someone who walks independently, without representing any association or claiming to speak on anyone’s behalf.
I had previously written to the Apostolic Nunciature (the Vatican’s diplomatic representation in Spain).
I had respectfully requested an audience. I had written a letter to the Holy Father explaining who I was, what I had suffered and why, for me, being heard for a few minutes could have profound reparative value.
When I received no response, I insisted. The response was silence. I was not the only one.
While the Pope was traveling through Spain, various victims and associations called for an opportunity to be heard. Some demonstrated outside the Nunciature. Others submitted their requests through different channels. Eventually, Leo XIV received six victims.
I was glad for them then, and I am still glad for them today. I have never believed that one victim should have to justify why they are received while another is not.
The problem is never the victims who are chosen. The problem is who chooses, how they choose, and what they do with everyone else.
That is what I wrote then.
And today, upon learning that on Sept. 27 the Pope will receive seven victims of sexual abuse in the French Church in Lourdes, that question inevitably returns to me.
Not because those victims should not be received.
They should.
I hope they can speak. I hope they can tell the Pope what so many of us have been trying to tell him for years.
I hope that what they find before them is not merely a head of state or the highest-ranking representative of an institution, but a human being willing to listen without defending himself, without managing time, without putting up filters and without turning their pain into a piece of protocol.
They themselves have had the dignity to make this clear even before the meeting: they do not represent all victims, and being received does not mean giving up their demands.
That gesture deserves respect. Precisely for that reason, this reflection is not directed against them. It is directed at the Vatican. It is directed at the Pope. It is directed at the bishops’ conferences.
And it is directed at a Church that still seems not to have understood something elementary: listening to a victim cannot be a privilege granted from above.
Who gets to be heard?
Because then a terrible question arises. Are there first-class victims and second-class victims?
In Spain, requests were left unanswered. Mine was one of them.
I was not asking for a photograph. I was not asking to appear alongside the Pope. I was not asking for prominence. I was asking to be heard. And I did not even receive a “no. “That is what is so difficult to understand.
How can an institution that has spent years talking about listening, reparation, accompaniment, dignity and the centrality of victims be incapable of responding to a victim who politely knocks on its door?
How can it then speak of closeness?
How can it preach that no one should be left on the margins while victims themselves have to wonder which door they should knock on, which association should represent them, who should recommend them or what profile they need to have to get a few minutes of being heard?
I walk independently. And precisely because of that, I know what it means not to have a structure behind you calling on your behalf.
But in Spain, it was not only about my case. Associations and organized victims publicly protested the way that meeting was prepared. The lack of transparency and the exclusion of groups that had been demanding reparation for years were questioned.
That is why the problem remains. There cannot be a kind of casting of pain. There cannot be institutionally convenient victims and uncomfortable victims. There cannot be victims for whom the door is opened and victims whose email is not even answered.
And above all, the Church cannot decide which testimonies it wants to hear and then present that meeting as the voice of “the victims.”
Victims are plural. We think differently. Some of us believe and some do not. Some of us remain within the Church, while others never want to enter it again. Some belong to associations, while others walk alone.
Some want spiritual reconciliation. Others want accountability, transparency, financial compensation, open archives and structural changes. And all of us are victims.
Listening beyond symbolic meetings
Lourdes can be an opportunity. It can also be a mirror.
I sincerely hope that the French victims who will be before Leo XIV can take advantage of that meeting to say what so many others were unable to tell him in Spain.
That they can speak without self-censorship. That they can make people uncomfortable. Because truly listening to a victim means accepting the possibility of feeling uncomfortable.
If the meeting serves only to produce a photograph, a cordial statement and carefully chosen words about pain, we will have made the mistake again.
If it serves to hear what the Church would prefer not to hear, then perhaps it will have been worthwhile.
But Lourdes also places the Vatican before a mirror. Because it is inevitable to compare.
Why some and not others? Why does a victim who respectfully writes to the representative of the Holy See in Spain not even deserve a response? Who decides who can look the Pope in the eyes?
According to what criteria? What happens to those who were not chosen? What message does a victim receive when they see another person sitting before the Holy Father while they were not even answered?
I am not talking about jealousy. I am not talking about competing over suffering. Quite the opposite.
I refuse to let us be turned into competitors. One victim’s pain does not diminish the value of another’s. When one door is opened for one victim, it should open doors for others, not close them.
And if a door is opened today in Lourdes, behind it are also decades of struggle by French, Spanish and many other victims who refused to remain silent. People who reported abuse when no one wanted to listen.
People who stood their ground before diocesan offices. People who went to court. People who spoke to journalists. People who wrote letters that were never answered.
Every door that is opened today also rests on all those voices. That is why I am glad that those seven people can enter. But I continue to wonder about those who remain outside.
What is wrong with the Church when it comes to victims? It is a question that can no longer be answered merely with documents, commissions, protocols and solemn words.
What is wrong with the Church? What is wrong with the Vatican?
What is happening within its leadership that, after everything that has become known, listening to victims continues to be so difficult?
Why do we still have to demand the most basic things again and again? Why does every advance seem to require years of pressure?
Why can an institution that speaks so much about mercy be so cold when the person knocking on the door bears a wound inflicted precisely within that institution?
The Church must keep listening
There are times when a victim eventually grows tired even of maintaining proper forms.
For years I have tried to express myself publicly with courtesy. I have been firm. I have been harsh when I considered it necessary. I have tried to distinguish between people who have treated me well and structures that have functioned poorly. And I want to continue doing so.
But respect does not mean silence. And the time has come to say this too: Enough already. Enough already with managing who deserves to be heard. Enough already with selecting some voices while others remain before a closed door.
Enough already with presenting every meeting as a demonstration of sensitivity if dozens of victims continue to wait for a response afterward.
Enough already with turning listening into an exceptional act that depends on a papal schedule. Enough already with words about the centrality of victims while we, the victims, continue to chase institutions to achieve that centrality.
Because that also causes harm. Ignoring a victim can also be a form of institutional mistreatment.
It is not the same harm as the abuse suffered. I do not intend to compare them. But it can reactivate the same experience of invisibility, helplessness and abandonment that many of us have carried within us for decades.
And that should deeply concern a Church that claims to want to make amends.
Holy Father: listen to them. But then keep listening. Listen to those seven people in Lourdes. Listen to them for real.
Allow them to make you uncomfortable. Allow them to question you. Allow them to tell you things that perhaps no one around you wants to tell you. But when that meeting ends, do not consider the task completed.
Because behind those seven people are thousands. Behind the six who were received in Madrid were many more.
And behind every visible victim are others who still cannot speak, who do not know whom to turn to or who have spent their entire lives convinced that no one will listen to them.
We do not want a Church that chooses a few stories to demonstrate that it listens. We want a Church capable of listening even when listening is difficult.
We do not want photographs. We want truth. We do not want ceremonies. We want reparation. We do not want to be managed.
We want to be treated as adults, free and dignified. And we do not want to hear again that “victims are at the center” while we continue to see closed doors.
To the victims who will be in Lourdes, I wish you strength. Speak. Say everything you need to say. Let no one use your presence afterward to claim that the problem has been resolved.
And know that behind you are also many of us who, from different places and with different stories, have spent years pushing against the same door.
To the Pope, the Vatican and the Church, I can only end by telling them something very simple: Do not force us to keep asking who deserves to be heard. Because as long as even one victim has to do so, reparation will remain incomplete.
And as long as there are victims who feel like first-class victims and victims who feel like second-class victims, something very deep will remain broken.
Enough already.
This is a translated and edited version of the column that first appeared on Religion Digital, and has been republished with permission by Global Catholic.