ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV held two back-to-back Vatican audiences Monday focused on abuse, indicating growing concern about what he described as “vulnerable” adults in the Catholic Church. In one meeting, the pope met with the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, and in the other he met with Gareth Gore, an investigative journalist who has criticized Opus Dei.
The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors advises the church on strategies for sexual abuse prevention, according to the report. Speaking to the commission, Leo appeared to be drawing on disclosures prompted by the #MeToo movement and encouraged its members to focus on vulnerability affecting adults as part of safeguarding.
The Vatican commission is focusing this year on vulnerability in adults, the report said. Leo told the commission that the church needed to listen to victims and that reading “signs of the times” helps the church respond with “pastoral clarity and structural renewal,” according to remarks attributed to him: “By reading these ‘signs of the times,’ you help the church to address safeguarding challenges courageously, and respond with pastoral clarity and structural renewal,” he said.
The report said abuses involving adults can include seminarians and nuns who are spiritually, psychologically, physically or sexually abused by superiors, as well as ordinary parishioners who fall under charismatic spiritual leaders who take advantage of them. It also said Catholic leadership has long focused narrowly on the church’s legacy of clergy sexual abuse against children.
Monday’s second audience was with Gore, the author of the 2024 book “Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking and Right-Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church,” the report said. Opus Dei is a movement founded by Spanish priest Josemaría Escrivá in 1928 and has 90,000 members in 70 countries, the article said.
The report said the pope clearly wanted the Gore meeting publicized. Gore’s encounter was listed on Leo’s formal agenda, and the Vatican released photos of the meeting.
In connection with Opus Dei’s response to allegations, the report said Opus Dei sharply rejected Gore’s book and issued a 106-page set of “clarifications” to journalists after it was published. It also said that in 2024 Argentine prosecutors concluded there were grounds for launching a criminal investigation into top South American Opus officials over charges of human trafficking and labor exploitation involving 44 women who alleged they were recruited to perform domestic tasks in their homes.
The report said no one has been formally charged in that case. It added that some complainants told AP in 2021 that they worked under “manifestly illegal conditions,” including working without pay for 12 hours-plus without breaks except for food or prayer, with no registration in the Social Security system and other alleged violations of basic rights. Opus Dei in Argentina denied the accusations, with its office saying in a 2024 statement: “We categorically deny the accusations of human trafficking and labor exploitation,” the report said.
The report said Leo’s attention to Opus Dei has been present since early in his pontificate, describing his meeting patterns with Opus leaders and the Vatican’s prior actions affecting Opus Dei’s relationship to the Holy See. It said that in 2022 Pope Francis imposed changes curbing Opus Dei’s special status, and that the Holy See later decreed how Opus Dei statutes could be handled.
The article said that six days after Leo’s election, on May 14, he met the Opus moderator, Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz Braña. It added that on Feb. 16, Leo met Opus prelate Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz and auxiliary Monsignor Mariano Fazio, and that Opus said at the time that the statutes were still a work in progress and that the officials briefed Leo on its position “regarding certain specific controversies in Argentina.”
For Gore’s audience, the report said it was facilitated by Pedro Salinas, a former member of the Peruvian group Sodalitium Christianae Vitae who knew Leo when he was a bishop in Peru. The report said Gore told him in a post on Substack that he briefed Leo on his findings, provided documentation, and urged the pope to launch an independent investigation into Opus.
According to the report, the Vatican gave no information on the audience. It said Gore recalled he had been critical of the Holy See’s handling of Opus allegations, writing that he had inferred the Vatican was “content to make a few superficial changes and move on without properly understanding or addressing the problem.” The report said Opus Dei had no comment Monday, pointing to its prior statement and to its response to Gore’s book.