{"id":36854,"date":"2026-06-08T16:00:04","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T16:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/36854\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T16:00:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T16:00:04","slug":"pope-says-spains-church-must-strengthen-safeguarding-measures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/36854\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope says Spain’s Church must strengthen safeguarding measures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pope Leo told Spain<\/a>‘s Catholic bishops today they must listen to survivors of abuse<\/a> by clergy and offer them reparations, in the first direct reference during his trip to scandals that have shaken the local Church’s credibility.<\/p>\n

Leo told the clerics that survivors \u200cof abuse should see a “determined commitment” from \u200bthe Church to \u200cstrengthen safeguarding measures and create a safe culture for \u200cchildren and vulnerable people.<\/p>\n

“One of the most painful encounters is with those who have been wounded precisely by those \u200bwho were supposed to care for them, including members of the clergy,” said the first U.S. pope.<\/p>\n

A 2023 \u200breport by Spain’s human rights ombudsman estimated hundreds of \u200cthousands of victims of clerical abuse there over decades, echoing scandals globally that have shaken the Church’s moral authority and cost hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements.<\/p>\n

Leo is making a week-long tour of Spain, his first to a European Union country outside Italy. The Vatican has said the pope will \u2060meet with a group of victims during the visit, but has yet to offer further details.<\/p>\n

Some prominent Spanish abuse \u200bsurvivor \u200bgroups have said they were \u200cnot invited to attend any papal meeting, and have characterised it as an insufficient photo opportunity.<\/p>\n

Juan Cuatrecasas, president of the group “Stolen Childhood”, said the survivors meeting with the pope do not represent \u200call Church victims.<\/p>\n

“They are being used by the church, by the bishops’ conference, to clean up the image of the Spanish Church”, he told reporters.<\/p>\n

While Leo’s predecessor, Francis, took steps during his 12-year papacy to address clerical abuse scandals, survivors’ groups have called for stricter accountability measures and a global \u2060zero-tolerance policy for clergy accused of misconduct.<\/p>\n

“Stolen Childhood” \u200cand other Spanish groups have demanded concrete measures including lifelong psychological care and fair compensation for victims, and support for education and employment.<\/p>\n

Last week, Madrid Cardinal Jose Cobo said it was simply not feasible for the pope to \u200bmeet multiple groups of survivors during his trip \u200cto \u200cSpain, due to the pontiff’s packed itinerary.<\/p>\n

“It doesn’t mean that these realities are not of interest to the pope, it is simply that his time is limited,” said Cobo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pope Leo told Spain‘s Catholic bishops today they must listen to survivors of abuse by clergy and offer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2656,9948,605,17176,17],"class_list":["post-36854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-abuse","tag-catholic-church","tag-latest-headlines","tag-pope-message","tag-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}