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 with them as they press for a zero-tolerance for abuse policy in the Catholic Church.
Ending Clergy Abuse is a global organization of abuse victims and activists 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 any priest who abuses a child.
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 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.
Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI before him also met with individual victims, but had kept activist and advocacy organizations at an arms’ length.
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