Pope Leo XIV has said there should be no tol­er­ance in the Catholic Church for any type of abuse – sex­u­al, spir­i­tu­al or abuse of au­thor­i­ty — and called for “trans­par­ent process­es” to cre­ate a cul­ture of pre­ven­tion across the church.

Leo made his first pub­lic com­ments about the cler­gy sex abuse scan­dal in a writ­ten mes­sage to a Pe­ru­vian jour­nal­ist who doc­u­ment­ed a par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious case of abuse and fi­nan­cial cor­rup­tion in a Pe­ru­vian-based Catholic move­ment, the So­dal­i­tium Chris­tianae Vi­tae.

The mes­sage was read out loud on Fri­day night in Li­ma dur­ing a per­for­mance of a play based on the So­dal­i­tium scan­dal and the work of the jour­nal­ist, Pao­la Ugaz.

“It is ur­gent to root in the whole church a cul­ture of pre­ven­tion that does not tol­er­ate any form of abuse – nei­ther of pow­er or au­thor­i­ty, nor abuse of con­science, spir­i­tu­al or sex­u­al abuse,” Leo said in the mes­sage. “This cul­ture will on­ly be au­then­tic if it is born of ac­tive vig­i­lance, of trans­par­ent process­es and sin­cere lis­ten­ing to those who have been hurt. For this, we need jour­nal­ists.”

Leo is well aware of the So­dal­i­tium scan­dal, since he spent two decades as a mis­sion­ary priest and bish­op in Pe­ru, where the group was found­ed in 1971. The then-Bish­op Robert Pre­vost was re­spon­si­ble for lis­ten­ing to the So­dal­i­tium’s vic­tims as the Pe­ru­vian bish­ops’ point-per­son for abuse vic­tims and helped some reach fi­nan­cial set­tle­ments with the or­ga­ni­za­tion.

Af­ter Pope Fran­cis brought him to the Vat­i­can in 2023, Pre­vost helped dis­man­tle the group en­tire­ly by over­see­ing the res­ig­na­tion of a pow­er­ful So­dal­i­tium bish­op. The So­dal­i­tium was of­fi­cial­ly sup­pressed ear­li­er this year, right be­fore Fran­cis died.

Now as pope, Leo has to over­see the dis­man­tling of the Sol­dal­i­tium and its size­able as­sets. The Vat­i­can en­voy on the ground han­dling the job, Mon­sign­or Jor­di Bertomeu, read out Leo’s mes­sage on Fri­day night, ap­pear­ing along­side Ugaz on stage.

In the mes­sage, Leo al­so praised jour­nal­ists for their courage in hold­ing the pow­er­ful to ac­count, de­mand­ed pub­lic au­thor­i­ties pro­tect them and said a free press is an “com­mon good that can­not be re­nounced.”

Ugaz and a So­dal­i­tium vic­tim, Pe­dro Sali­nas, have faced years of crim­i­nal and civ­il lit­i­ga­tion from So­dal­i­tium and its sup­port­ers for their in­ves­tiga­tive re­port­ing in­to the group’s twist­ed prac­tices and fi­nan­cial mis­con­duct, and they have praised Leo for his han­dling of the case.

The abuse scan­dal is one of the thorni­est dossiers fac­ing Leo, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en de­mands from sur­vivors that he go even far­ther than Fran­cis in ap­ply­ing a ze­ro-tol­er­ance for abuse across the church, in­clud­ing for abusers whose vic­tims were adults.

LI­MA, Pe­ru (AP)