Pope Leo XIV Takes Life Message to Lourdes, Meets Abuse Survivors

Pope Leo XIV brought his opposition to euthanasia and medically assisted dying to Lourdes on Sunday, the French Catholic shrine long associated with miraculous cures and, more recently, with healing for survivors of clergy sexual abuse.

The pope was scheduled to meet with French bishops before celebrating Mass on the prairie in front of Lourdes' main basilica before an estimated 150,000 people. Later in the day, he was to meet a group of survivors, an appointment that has become a regular feature of papal trips.

Leo arrived in Lourdes on Saturday night from Paris and went straight to the Grotto of Apparitions, where he prayed and drank from the spring. Lourdes became a major pilgrimage destination after the Catholic Church officially recognised visions of the Virgin Mary reported by a young girl in 1858. The site near the Spanish border draws millions of pilgrims each year, especially sick and disabled believers hoping for a cure from the famed spring water.

Across his four-day visit to France, the pope has repeatedly called for renewed respect for life, in keeping with Catholic teaching that all human life must be protected and defended from conception until natural death. That teaching translates into firm opposition to abortion and medically assisted dying. France's National Assembly enshrined abortion as a constitutional right in 2024 and recently gave final approval to a bill allowing adults with incurable illnesses to receive lethal medication.

At Lourdes, where the church has recognised 72 cures as authentic, the question of respecting the frail, sick and vulnerable is particularly acute.

More recently, the shrine has also become a place of healing for survivors of clergy sexual abuse. Leo was to meet seven victims on Sunday, including one who was abused as an adult, in recognition of what the church faces as a new frontier of the abuse crisis.

The French church has endured a brutal reckoning with its legacy of abuse. An independent report in 2021 estimated that 330,000 children had been abused over 70 years by some 3,000 priests and church workers. Despite criticism of the report's methodology and conclusions, French bishops put in place an independent compensation system for victims that has so far recommended payouts of more than 20 million euros ($22.7 million).

On the day the pope arrived in Paris, a group of victims published an open letter asking him to acknowledge the church's responsibility and criticising the fact that the seven survivors were chosen by the church rather than by victims' groups. "The Church must relinquish its position as both judge and party to the proceedings," they wrote in the letter, published by the French newspaper Liberation.

In Lourdes, Leo will also be reminded of a difficult abuse case inherited from Pope Francis. The facade of one of the Lourdes basilicas was designed by the Rev. Marko Rupnik, one of the Catholic Church's most famous mosaic artists. Rupnik is currently on trial in a Vatican court, accused by more than two dozen women of having psychologically, spiritually and sexually abused them starting in the 1990s, including during the creation of his artworks.

His case was covered up for three decades by his Jesuit superiors, and even Francis was suspected of having protected his fellow Jesuit. In response to a media outcry, Francis in 2024 ordered a canonical trial, which is ongoing. The case raised the question of what to do with Rupnik's mosaics, which adorn basilicas around the world.

In 2024, Lourdes Bishop Jean-Marc Micas decided to stop illuminating the facade of the Notre Dame du Rosaire Basilica at night. He subsequently ordered the decorated doors covered and, more recently, decided to cover the facade's mosaics entirely, reasoning that abuse victims who come to Lourdes for healing should not be forced to see them. As Leo approached the grotto on Saturday night, his popemobile drove past the basilica and its boarded-up mosaics.