(PERU)
Eutoday [London, UK]
November 14, 2026
By Gary Cartwright
Pope Leo XIV’s meeting with abuse survivors in Peru may signal a welcome change in attitude. But decades of institutional failure, unanswered allegations and the slow pursuit of justice leave an uncomfortable question: does the Catholic Church genuinely want to confront its past, or is it still more concerned with protecting itself?
There is something profoundly disturbing about the continuing need for victims of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church to plead for recognition, accountability and justice decades after their childhoods were destroyed. That Pope Leo XIV has now met survivors in Peru to discuss how the Church should treat victims is welcome. But it also raises an uncomfortable question: why, in 2026, should such conversations still be necessary?
According to a Reuters report published on November 12th, Pope Leo met six survivors of abuse by Catholic clergy and religious institutions in Lima. The meeting lasted more than an hour, with the Pope listening individually to their experiences and discussing the need for truth, healing, greater attention to victims and safer environments.
It was an encouraging gesture, particularly given Leo’s previous involvement in confronting allegations surrounding the Peruvian religious organisation Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, which was eventually dissolved by the Vatican.
Yet gestures, however well intentioned, are not justice. Nor should a private audience with the Pope be mistaken for evidence that the institution he leads has finally confronted the full extent of its historical crimes.
The central problem is not that the Catholic Church has failed to express regret. It is that expressions of regret have so frequently been accompanied by institutional defensiveness, inadequate investigations, insufficient transparency and an apparent reluctance to hold those responsible properly accountable.
The CIASE report: an indictment of institutional failure
The scale of the problem was laid bare in October 2021, when France’s Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) published its landmark investigation into sexual violence within the Catholic Church between 1950 and 2020.
The findings were nothing short of devastating.
The commission estimated that approximately 216,000 children had been sexually abused by Catholic priests and members of religious orders in France during the period examined. When abuse by lay people working in Church institutions was included, the estimated number of victims rose to approximately 330,000.
These were not simply isolated incidents involving a handful of rogue priests. The commission documented a deeply embedded institutional problem, including the protection of the Church’s reputation at the expense of those who had suffered.
Its conclusion was particularly damning. For a very long time, the Church’s immediate response had been to protect itself as an institution, demonstrating what the report described as complete, even cruel, indifference towards victims.
That assessment deserves particular attention because the report was not produced by an organisation hostile to Catholicism. CIASE was established at the initiative of the French Catholic Church itself, and was given considerable independence and access to Church archives.
Its 45 recommendations addressed everything from listening to survivors and reforming canon law to recognising historic crimes, compensating victims, improving clerical training and eliminating the conditions that allowed perpetrators to operate with impunity.
Five years later, the question is not whether the Church knows what needs to be done. It is whether it has the determination to do it.
The significance of EU Today’s article, Europe’s Catholic Seminaries Under Shadow of Historic Child Abuse Allegations, lies in precisely this wider context. Seminaries are not peripheral institutions. They are where future priests are educated, where attitudes towards authority and obedience are developed, and where the Church’s understanding of responsibility, morality and pastoral care is transmitted to the next generation.
If historical abuse allegations continue to cast a shadow over such institutions, the problem cannot simply be dismissed as an unfortunate legacy of an earlier generation.
There must be serious questions about institutional culture, oversight, transparency and whether those responsible for educating future clergy have genuinely learned the lessons of the past.
The Church cannot credibly claim to have transformed itself while failing to demonstrate that the environments in which its future leaders are trained are safe, accountable and subject to independent scrutiny.
A culture of self-preservation
One of the most troubling aspects of the Catholic Church’s response to abuse has been its apparent preoccupation with institutional survival.
For generations, priests accused of abusing children were sometimes moved between parishes, religious institutions or countries. Complaints were handled internally, victims were discouraged from speaking publicly, and the authority of the priest was frequently placed above the welfare of the child.
The consequences extended far beyond the original abuse. Children who should have been protected by their religious communities were left carrying the psychological and emotional consequences into adulthood. Some never received an apology. Others died without seeing their abusers held accountable.
It is difficult to reconcile this history with an institution that claims to occupy the moral high ground on questions of family, morality and the protection of children.
Nor is the problem confined to France. Allegations and investigations across Ireland, Belgium, Germany, the United States, Australia and elsewhere demonstrate that clerical abuse and institutional failures have been international problems.
There have undoubtedly been reforms, safeguarding procedures and more rigorous reporting requirements. It would be unfair to suggest that nothing has changed or that every member of the clergy is somehow implicated.
But the existence of new procedures does not automatically demonstrate that the underlying institutional culture has changed.
Pope Leo’s opportunity
Pope Leo XIV has an opportunity to distinguish his papacy from the defensive approach that has characterised so much of the Church’s response to this scandal.
His willingness to meet survivors in Peru is encouraging. Reuters reports that Camila Bustamante, one of those attending, described the encounter as an important milestone, while warning that victims rarely achieve closure in their cases.
There is also an important qualification. Survivors’ organisation Ending Clergy Abuse criticised the Pope’s earlier meeting in Buenos Aires because it excluded victims from a notorious abuse case involving deaf children. This illustrates the continuing difficulty of ensuring that victims are properly represented and that engagement is not simply symbolic.
The Pope’s words about truth, healing and creating safe environments must now translate into measurable action.
That means independent investigations, unrestricted access to relevant archives, meaningful compensation, cooperation with civil authorities and the removal of perpetrators from positions where they might threaten children.
It also means holding senior Church officials accountable when evidence establishes that they concealed abuse, obstructed investigations or prioritised institutional reputation over the safety of children.
There can be no special exemption from accountability simply because the accused or those protecting them wear clerical robes.
Does the Church really want to change?
Perhaps the most uncomfortable conclusion one might draw from the continuing revelations is that there appears to be no sufficiently compelling desire within the Catholic Church, as an institution, to address the historic abuse of its children with the urgency and determination the subject demands.
That is a serious judgement, and not one that should be applied indiscriminately to individual Catholics, priests or religious communities genuinely committed to protecting children.
Nevertheless, when scandals continue to emerge, when survivors still struggle to obtain recognition, and when the same questions about transparency and accountability remain unresolved years after major investigations, it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid that impression.
The CIASE report effectively handed the Church a blueprint for reform. Its recommendations were not obscure, complicated theological propositions. They were practical measures designed to establish truth, recognise responsibility, compensate victims and prevent further abuse.
The Church has had years to demonstrate that it is prepared to implement them in spirit as well as in words.
It is not enough for a Pope to listen sympathetically to six survivors in Lima, however meaningful that encounter might be for those individuals. Millions of Catholics, together with countless people who have abandoned the Church because of its handling of abuse, need to see evidence of fundamental institutional change.
The Catholic Church frequently reminds the world that forgiveness, repentance and redemption are central to its teachings.
But repentance requires an acknowledgement of wrongdoing. Redemption requires responsibility. And forgiveness cannot be demanded from those who have suffered while the institution responsible continues to protect its own interests.
Until the Church demonstrates that the protection of children takes precedence over the protection of its reputation, its claims to moral authority will remain profoundly compromised.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that the children who needed the Church’s protection most were so often the ones it failed.
And the question that continues to haunt the institution is a simple one: if the Catholic Church genuinely wanted to put this shameful chapter behind it, why does it still appear so reluctant to confront it fully?