Pope to meet with victims of clerical sex abuse during France trip

Pope Leo XIV will meet on Sunday with victims of clerical sex abuse, a day after holding an open-air mass for hundreds of thousands of worshippers and praying at a holy shrine in Lourdes during his official visit to France.

The leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics is on a four-day trip to France, a secular country with deep Catholic roots, marking the first official papal visit there in nearly two decades.

He is expected to meet privately with seven victims after promising to further efforts to reform the Church in the wake of the global sexual abuse scandal.

A 2021 inquiry found that clergy or lay members of the Church had abused about 330,000 people as minors in France over the span of 70 years.

Among the victims who will meet the pope is a former pupil of the Notre-Dame de Betharram institution, a boarding school in southwestern France at the centre of widespread accusations of physical and sexual abuse over decades.

Sunday's meeting comes a day after the US pontiff visited the southwestern pilgrimage town of Lourdes and prayed at the Grotto of Massabielle, where Catholic tradition holds that the Virgin Mary appeared in 1858 to a peasant girl, later canonised as Saint Bernadette.

Months ahead of a presidential election with the far-right surging and immigration high on the agenda, he prayed to the Virgin Mary to "obtain for France wise and generous leaders... eager to serve the common good".

"May they make her (France's) voice heard in promoting the defence of fundamental human rights and peace in the world, rejecting the mentality of war once and for all."

AFP reporters saw him perform the rituals observed by the many pilgrims to the cave: touching the rock, lighting a candle and drinking spring water.