VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV met Monday for the first time with an organization of clergy abuse survivors and advocates, who said he agreed to maintain a permanent dialogue as they press for a zero-tolerance policy for abuse in the Catholic Church.
Ending Clergy Abuse is a global organization that has been campaigning to universalize the U.S. church’s abuse policy. Among other things, the policy calls for the permanent removal from ministry of a priest based on even a single act of sexual abuse that is either admitted to or established according to church law.
The U.S. policy, first articulated in the 1990s, was publicly adopted at the height of the scandal there in a bid to restore trust and credibility in the U.S. hierarchy after revelations of decades of abuse and cover-up. It is church law in the United States but is not embraced elsewhere.
Leo acknowledged “there was great resistance” to the idea of a universal zero-tolerance law, said Tim Law, ECA co-founder. But Law said he told Leo that ECA wanted to work with him and the Vatican to move the idea forward.
Leo has met before with clergy abuse survivors, and was the point person for listening to victims in the Peruvian bishops conference when he was a bishop there. But history’s first American pope acknowledged the significance of meeting with ECA as an activist organization, members told a press conference.
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