Lourdes – France, Sept 27. (dpa/GNA) – Pope Leo XIV, celebrated Mass with 150,000 worshippers in the French pilgrimage town of Lourdes on Sunday, acknowledging “deep wounds, a breach of trust and painful failings” committed within the Church.
“The admission of our mistakes is indispensable for our spiritual growth,” the head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics said in his homily.
In the afternoon, Leo is due to meet privately with a small group of victims of sexual abuse by clergy.
Leo has been in France since Friday, and is set to leave on Monday.
The small town of Lourdes in south-western France, with 13,400 inhabitants, is one of Europe’s best-known pilgrimage sites.
According to Catholic belief, the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ, appeared there multiple times to a 14-year-old girl in the mid-19th century.
On Saturday, 800,000 people had already attended a papal Mass in Paris. The attendance figures were provided by the Vatican and French authorities.
As in other countries, abuse by priests in France was covered up for decades. According to an independent commission of inquiry, there have been more than 200,000 victims since 1950.
In Lourdes, Leo is confronted with the case of a former Jesuit priest and artist. Former clergyman Marko Rupnik from Slovenia, is suspected of having sexually abused nuns over several decades.
Proceedings against him are under way before a special court at the Vatican.
Rupnik co-designed the entrance doors of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary in the pilgrimage town.
However, the pope did not see the works. On the orders of the local bishop, the large mosaics were covered with aluminium panels.
The final stop of his four-day trip is the city of Metz, in the east of the country and close to the Franco-German border, where the US-born pontiff plans to deliver a speech on Europe.
France has maintained a strict separation of Church and state for more than a century, with the exception of some regions in the east of the country for historical reasons.
Catholics remain the largest religious group in France, but many people in the country no longer identify with any religion.
The proportion of Muslims in the country of 69 million has grown in recent years.
GNA