On October 16, 2025, the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors released its second annual report, igniting a fresh wave of debate over how the Catholic Church should reckon with the legacy of clergy sexual abuse. The report, which covers the year 2024, arrives at a critical moment—just months after the election of Pope Leo XIV, history’s first American pontiff, who has publicly recognized that the abuse scandal remains an enduring “crisis” for the global Church.
At its core, the report lays out a stark moral imperative: the Church, it states, has a duty to help victims of clergy sexual abuse heal. But what does healing mean in practice? According to the commission, it must include both financial reparations and sanctions for abusers and their enablers—remedies that are as essential as they are sensitive, given the Church’s concerns about legal, reputational, and financial fallout.
This year’s report stands out not only for its recommendations, but also for how it was crafted. Forty survivors from around the world contributed their perspectives, complaints, and hopes in focus group settings. Their voices, often sidelined in the past, are now at the heart of the Church’s ongoing reckoning. As the report puts it, “The church bears a moral and spiritual obligation to heal the deep wounds inflicted from sexual violence perpetrated, enabled, mishandled, or covered up by anyone holding a position of authority in the church.”
Survivors’ demands are clear. They want access to therapy and other forms of assistance to help them recover from trauma. They seek spiritual and pastoral support, not just monetary settlements. And, perhaps most importantly, they want Church leaders to apologize for the harm done, to explain what steps are being taken to punish offenders, and to outline how future abuses will be prevented. As Archbishop Thibault Verny, the commission’s leader, said at a press conference, “The commission is committed to saying to victims and survivors: ‘We want to be by your side.’”
Yet, for many survivors, the greatest pain has come not just from the abuse itself, but from the Church’s handling of their cases. The report is unsparing in its criticism of the Church’s secretive and slow-moving internal processes, which it calls retraumatizing. “We must re-emphasise that the church’s decades-long pattern of mishandling reports, including abandoning, ignoring, shaming, blaming, and stigmatizing victims/survivors, perpetuates the trauma as an ongoing harm,” the report states. In practice, this often means that even priests accused of serial abuse are simply dismissed from ministry—a punishment the report deems inadequate. The process is cloaked in secrecy, with victims typically learning only the final outcome after years of waiting, and with little or no information about the investigation itself.
The commission is calling for a seismic shift: sanctions that are “tangible and commensurate with the severity of the crime,” and clear, public communication about why bishops are removed or resign. Too often, the report notes, the public is told only that a bishop has retired, leaving the real reasons shrouded in mystery. According to Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability.org, the report “should serve as a wake-up call to Leo [Pope Leo XIV], who she noted had seemed to minimize the enormity of the scandal in an interview in which he stressed the need to ensure the rights of priests.”
Beyond the call for justice and transparency, the commission’s report also highlights the need for dialogue and cultural sensitivity. As reported by WORLD, commission member Benyam Dawit Mezmur explained that survivors’ wishes for reparations vary widely depending on cultural context. “Financial compensation is one part of reparations, but many abuse survivors from Africa, for example, just want an apology,” Mezmur noted. Others seek restitution or rehabilitation. This diversity of needs underscores the importance of ongoing conversations and locally tailored solutions.
The Church’s global reach means the scandal is not confined to any one region. In fact, the report’s audit of child protection policies and practices paints a sobering picture of underreporting and challenges in the developing world. The Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization’s missionary office, which oversees more than 1,100 dioceses in Asia, Africa, Oceania, and parts of Latin America—about a third of all Catholic dioceses—reported only a “small number of cases” of abuse and just two reports of bishops who covered up crimes. That’s an astonishingly low figure given the vastness of the territory, and it suggests that abuse is happening unchecked and unreported in many places.
Why the silence? The report points to a complex web of factors: cultural taboos (especially around same-sex abuse), lack of resources, the threat of reprisals, and the reality that the Church in many developing countries is grappling with war, conflict, and poverty. “I know for a fact that there are cases,” Mezmur said at the commission’s news conference. “But we need to look deeper and see why are they not being reported. Are the structures in place? Are there issues about reprisals? Are there issues that we need to address about power relations?”
Empowering minors and their families to report abuse—and educating them about child protection—are seen as crucial steps toward building a culture of safeguarding. The commission praised countries like Malta, South Korea, and Slovakia for their high rates of compliance with prevention policies, but noted that even in Italy, only 81 out of 226 dioceses responded to the commission’s questionnaire. In places like Mali, the situation is even more dire: the bishops’ conference website “does not seem to be functioning and accessible.”
Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, another commission member, stressed that true reform requires more than just disciplinary proceedings. “Let’s talk about how these victims were sexually assaulted, how those victims feel, how their reports were dealt with, and where information is getting stuck,” she said, emphasizing the need for transparency and survivor-centered communication.
Looking ahead, the commission plans to continue its work, with another report and new recommendations expected next year. For now, the message is clear: the Church’s path to healing will require not only financial reparations and tougher sanctions, but also deep cultural change, honest dialogue, and a willingness to listen to survivors—wherever they are.
As the Vatican faces the daunting task of restoring trust and safeguarding children, the voices of survivors and the commission’s call for accountability have never been more urgent—or more necessary.
