Seven victims of sexual violence in the Church received by Pope Leo XIV in Lourdes, the Betharram collective excluded

Seven victims of sexual violence in the Church will be received by Pope Leo “Seven victims will be received” by Leo

The Church has received around forty requests, including a dozen from groups, the CEF is informed, recalling that it will be a “private meeting”, therefore open only to invited people and off camera. “All communication” on this meeting “will be left to the choice of the people themselves,” specifies the CEF which will not give the composition of the group. But the main and original collective of victims of Bétharram, 15 km from Lourdes, announced “with dismay” that it would not be received.

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Its spokesperson Alain Esquerre does not “know” if former students of the establishment, outside the collective, are among the seven victims received. “We wanted a collective approach to speak on behalf of all the victims and obtain two things from the Pope: to bear witness to the shame of the Church, and above all, to propose an action plan,” he told AFP. This “institutional contempt” and this “game of victim competition” (...) “demonstrate that the Church is still not ready to deal with this systemic problem”, he added, denouncing “individual” and “on the sly” meetings to “leave the problem on the margins”.

However, Sud-Ouest affirms that a victim from Betharram will be received by the sovereign pontiff. According to the daily, this person did not request this interview and was directly contacted by the CEF. The other victims come from other regions of France, including one from Brittany, says the newspaper. Philippe Chemineau, president of the MVR association (victims of Lasallian Catholic schools) also said he was “very disappointed” not to have received an invitation. “It’s totally opaque, we don’t know at all how people are selected or how it will happen,” he told AFP.

“Representative” group

The CEF assures that “there will be many people who are members of collectives among the seven”, explaining that the group will be “representative” of the backgrounds: men and women, minors or adults at the time of the facts, diversity of territories and places (Catholic education, parish, congregation, etc.). Expressing its “regret” at not being received, the Ampaseo collective (victims of Catholic schools in the West) assured in a press release that it had the green light from the CEF for a stained glass window created by a victim to be given to the Pope during the visit.

The CEF indicates that it, with the Conference of Religious Men and Women of France (Corref), invited the victims who could not be received “to send a writing with what they would have wanted to say to the Pope”. “All the messages will be brought together in a collection which will be given to the Holy Father” and a day of restitution of this meeting is being organized, adds the CEF.

In Spain, in June, the Pope received six victims of sexual violence. Some of the main associations regretted not having been invited. He then demanded “truth, justice and reparation” in the face of the “scourge” of sexual violence committed within the Church. In 2021, a report estimated the number of minor victims of priests, deacons, religious or people linked to the Church of France at around 330,000 since 1950. The Church has since set up several listening and reparation bodies.