POPE Leo XIV is facing the scale of the challenge to tackle the scourge of sexual abuse allegations inside the Catholic Church, as a landmark report from the Vatican’s own commission delivered a scathing indictment of the Church’s global failures, criticising a “decades-long pattern of mishandling” that causes “ongoing harm” to victims.
The report, the first since the American pope’s election, sets the stage for his pontificate by explicitly calling out failures in Italy – on the pope’s doorstep – and across Africa for lacking robust anti-abuse measures.
It accuses the Church’s central administration of being perceived as “lacking in sensitivity” and details a global culture of “denial and dismissal,” “retaliation,” and a “lack of accountability.”
“We must re-emphasise that the Church’s decades-long pattern of mishandling reports, including abandoning, ignoring, shaming, blaming, and stigmatising victims/survivors, perpetuates the trauma as an ongoing harm,” the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors stated in its hard-hitting 200-page annual report released Thursday. The first report was published last year.
The document serves as a direct confrontation for Pope Leo, outlining the systemic reforms demanded of his administration. It calls for the Church to offer “reparations” for abuse, including financial support and public apologies, and demands greater transparency from the Vatican, specifically that it start communicating the reasons for a bishop’s removal when linked to abuse.
While Bishop Luis Manuel Ali Herrera, the commission’s secretary, said Pope Leo has the “same strong commitment” as his predecessor Pope Francis, he brings an “analytical” style to a crisis demanding faster action. Since his election, Leo XIV has stated it is “urgent to ingrain throughout the Church a culture of prevention that does not tolerate any form of abuse.”
The report highlights the immediate obstacles to that goal. It warns of “substantial cultural resistance in Italy to addressing abuse,” noting that significant portions of the Italian church leadership have not even met with the Vatican’s abuse commission. The Italian bishops’ conference pushed back, calling the report’s data “partial.”
Meanwhile, in Africa, protocols were found severely lacking. The commission could find no complaint procedures in Equatorial Guinea, cited “resistance” from leaders in Ethiopia, and noted that cultural taboos in Kenya make reporting difficult for victims.
Compiled under the leadership of Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, a former UN Special Rapporteur, the report gives voice to survivors who described a “lack of psychological care” and “strong resistance to safeguarding reforms” at the grassroots level. At the Vatican press conference, de Boer-Buquicchio thanked the media for “uplifting the voices of victims and survivors when the institutional church has failed to listen.”
The commission, established by Pope Francis in 2014, now presents its findings to a new pope, framing the global abuse crisis as the defining challenge of his nascent papacy.
