Pope Leo XIV Meets Abuse Victims in Peru Today

Pope Leo XIV met six survivors of clerical abuse in Peru on Thursday, 12 November 2026, sitting with each of them one by one for just over an hour at the Apostolic Nunciature in Lima. He listened to their stories of suffering and pain, thanked them for their testimony, and told the Church it must make amends. It was his second meeting with survivors on a 12-day tour of South America, and the most personal yet.

The meeting began just after 4:30 p.m. local time. After a brief greeting in the Nunciature's chapel, the Pope met each survivor individually. There was no audience, no cameras in the room, and no speech. There was only a man who used to be their bishop, listening.

Some of the six had once belonged to groups linked to the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, the Peru-based Catholic society dissolved in 2025 after years of allegations of sexual, physical and psychological abuse. That detail matters, because the man sitting across from them is the same man who once heard their claims as a bishop — and whom survivors credit with pushing for the society to be shut down.

Pope Leo XIV Abuse Victims Meeting Lima November 12

The Vatican said the Pope and the survivors reflected together "on how to foster a change in mindset through listening to victims, seeking the truth, supporting healing processes, and committing to the creation of safe environments." Those are careful words, but they point at something blunt: the Church has spent decades failing to listen, and Leo is saying the listening itself has to change.

At the end of the meeting, the Pope thanked them for their "valuable testimony, expressing his closeness to them and to all those victims of abuse whom he had been unable to meet." Before he left, he imparted his blessing on those present.

One of the survivors spoke afterwards. Camila Bustamante, who is also a journalist, told Reuters the meeting was "an important milestone" and that Leo appeared "very committed" to helping victims. Then she added the warning that survivors always carry with them.

"Victims are accustomed to persevering, even when things become difficult," Bustamante said. "I believe the message must be that we should not give up and that we must continue working for a world without abuse."

Renzo Orbegozo, 50, was among the six who spoke with reporters after the meeting. His presence alone said something: these are not names on a list. They are people who have waited years to be heard by the man at the top, and now they have been.

Pope Leo XIV Sodalitium Victims Peru Amends

Earlier on Thursday, Leo had addressed Peru's bishops about the same wound. He described the "pain" caused by clerical abuse and said the Church must make "amends" to victims and foster "a culture of prevention and protection." The word "amends" is doing heavy work there. It is not an apology for the past alone. It is a promise about the future.

The history behind the meeting runs deep. The Sodalitium Christianae Vitae was founded in the 1970s and spread across Latin America. It was shut down in 2025 by Leo's predecessor, Pope Francis, after years of allegations of sexual, physical and psychological abuse, as well as corruption.

Before he was elected pope, Robert Francis Prevost was the bishop designated to hear from Sodalitium victims, and the victims said he was supportive of their claims. Some survivors credit him with pushing for the Vatican to dissolve the group. Now, as pope, he has come back to the country where he served as a missionary for about 20 years and as bishop of Pope Leo XIV Returns to Chiclayo Today for Mass from 2015 to 2023, and he is hearing them again — this time as the man in charge.

Leo is the first Peruvian citizen to lead the Catholic Church, and this is an emotional return to a nation he calls his homeland. He was Pope Leo XIV Welcomed by 3 Million in Peru Today when he arrived in Lima, and the crowds have broken records at every stop. But the quietest hour of the trip may turn out to be the one that matters most.

Not everyone is satisfied. On Monday in Buenos Aires, Leo met five survivors of abuse in a seperate meeting, and the international survivors' group Ending Clergy Abuse criticised that meeting for not including more survivors, including at least 20 people abused at an institute for deaf children in a notorious case in Argentina. The Vatican, which normally does not discuss how the pope's meetings with victims are arranged, citing victims' privacy, gave no further information about how the Buenos Aires meeting was set up.

On the eve of the pope's South America tour, the US-based nonprofit Bishop Accountability presented a list in Lima of 77 members of the Peruvian clergy it said had been publicly accused of abusing minors. That number hangs over the whole visit, and it is the reason a one-hour meeting in a chapel in Lima carries so much weight.

The Church has written letters about abuse before, as in Pope Leo XIV Letter French Bishops Lourdes Holiness Youth Abuse Victims November 3 2026, and it has sent envoys to troubled places, as Cardinal Gugerotti to Visit Holy Land for Pope Leo XIV reported. But a pope sitting for over an hour with six survivors, one by one, is a different kind of statement. It says the listening is not finished, and the amends are not yet made.

The tour runs through 16 November, and today Leo returns to Chiclayo, the diocese he led for eight years, for a Mass expected to draw around a million people. The crowds will sing, and the cameras will turn. But the question that will follow him home is the one Bustamante left hanging in the air: will the Church keep listening when the tour is over, and will the men who hurt these survivors ever face the justice they are still waiting for?