Pope urges Spanish Church to adopt ‘culture of care’, reparations for sex abuse survivors
Pope Leo XIV told Spain’s Catholic hierarchy on Monday to provide reparations to survivors of clergy sexual abuse and deal with the crisis transparently, ahead of an expected meeting with survivors during his weeklong visit to the country. Leo told Spanish bishops the entire church community should have an “ever more determined commitment to prevention and a culture of care”. The Spanish hierarchy had largely dismissed the scale of abuse in their church for decades until a newspaper began documenting a legacy of abuse and cover-up. “Faced with this scourge, the ecclesial community is called to respond with listening, truth, justice reparation,” Leo said. “Every wounded person must be able to find sincere listening, welcome, protection and real paths to healing.” Amid public outrage over the abuse crisis, Spain launched a reparations system earlier this year for clerical abuse cases too old to be prosecuted that requires the participation of the Catholic Church and the Spanish government. Other countries and churches have set up reparations mechanisms to compensate survivors and provide therapy, but the Spanish …
