Vatican says Pope Leo XIV will meet clergy abuse survivors during Latin America trip

Pope Leo XIV will meet with survivors of clergy sexual abuse during his trip to Latin America, the Vatican announced on Tuesday, according to a report from Globalnews.ca. That report said the trip includes visits to Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru, and that several meetings are scheduled, though the Vatican had not disclosed specific dates or locations. The trip had been postponed after the pope’s lung cancer surgery in October and was proceeding as planned.

A report from Sudouest.fr gave the trip dates as November 6-17 and listed stops in Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay. That report said the Vatican would meet with victims of “aggression in the Church” but did not disclose the specific nature of the attacks or the places where they occurred. The Globalnews.ca and Sudouest.fr reports differ on the itinerary: the first names Peru as a stop, while the second names Paraguay and also refers to planned meetings with members of the Peruvian government. The reports do not agree on which countries the pope will visit.

The reports also describe the Vatican’s earlier steps concerning a Peruvian Catholic movement. Globalnews.ca identified it as the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae movement, and said that Pope Francis suppressed it in 2025 with a key role played by former Cardinal Robert Prevost. Sudouest.fr reported that the Vatican said in April it intended to provide compensation to victims of the movement, and that the movement was dissolved the following year after an investigation into systemic sexual, physical, and psychological violence committed by some of its officials. Globalnews.ca also reported that Leo served as a missionary priest in Peru for two decades and was designated a bishop to address the effects of the movement. Sudouest.fr described the Vatican’s response as including both financial compensation and efforts to ensure such abuses do not recur.

Globalnews.ca reported that earlier meetings between the Vatican and abuse survivors had been held in Spain and France under previous popes, and that the Vatican’s advance confirmation of the current meetings marks a change from past practice. Sudouest.fr reported that during a visit to Spain in June, Leo expressed his commitment to combating sexual violence in the region. Globalnews.ca also reported that victims in Argentina have called for greater Vatican action, including attention to cases in which the pope was personally involved. These are the victims’ calls and are not findings about any individual.

A third report, from Yahoo News Canada, described the situation differently. It stated that Pope Leo XIV “recently visited Argentina” and that the visit had drawn renewed attention to longstanding concerns about clergy abuse scandals. That report’s account conflicts with the other two, which describe the Argentina stop as part of a trip that had not yet taken place when they were published. The available text of the Yahoo report is incomplete, so its description of those concerns cannot be confirmed from the material reviewed. Survivors’ meetings with the pope, as described in the first two reports, are planned, and no dates or outcomes have been publicly reported.