VATICAN CITY: Pope Leo XIV stressed the importance of listening to victims of clerical sex abuse during a meeting with cardinals from around the world this week, according to comments released Saturday.
In a speech concluding the two-day, closed-door consistory, the US pope said the abuse of children and vulnerable adults by priests was still a “wound” in the Catholic Church.
“Listening is profoundly important,” Leo said, according to a Vatican transcript, adding: “We cannot close our eyes, nor our hearts.”
He noted that abuse was not a specific topic for discussion during the consistory, his first since taking over as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics in May following the death of Pope Francis.
But he said he wanted to raise it in his closing remarks, saying the scourge was “a problem that still today is truly a wound in the life of the Church in many places.”
