Pope Leo has called on French bishops to root out the “scourge” of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic church, urging them to “maintain the greatest vigilance”.

The Pope delivered the message to bishops during a private meeting at the Sanctuary of Our Holy Lady of Lourdes, a holy site in southern France, on the third day of his four-day official visit to France.

A 2021 inquiry found that clergy or lay members of the Church had abused about 330,000 people as children in France over 70 years.

The Pope said Mass in front of thousands of worshippers in Lourdes before later meeting survivors of abuse.

The Pope told the bishops: “You have faced with determination the painful scourge of abuse of minors committed by members of the clergy or within an ecclesial context.

“It is important to persevere along the path you have begun, maintaining the greatest vigilance.”

The gathering of senior church leaders was held behind closed doors and the remarks were later released to reporters.

Leo then met with seven survivors of abuse by the French clergy.

The Pope “thanked them for their painful testimony and reaffirmed his commitment to ensuring that the harm they experienced is not repeated for others”, the Vatican said in a statement.

“It was extraordinary,” said survivor Jean-Marie Delbos at a news conference following the encounter with the pontiff. He said Leo listened and was informed of their cases. “I never thought I would have a Pope before me,” he added.

The Lourdes gathering came a day after an estimated 700,000 people flocked to the Place de la Concorde in Paris to hear the pontiff speak.

Huge crowds cheered and waved as he rode down the Champs-Élysées Avenue greeting followers from his open-topped popemobile.

On Friday, the Pope also met French President Emmanuel Macron.

During Saturday’s Mass in Paris, the Pope told worshippers that Catholics should not keep their faith to themselves but “let it overflow so that those you meet may be refreshed”.

The leader of the Catholic Church also addressed young people in his speech, describing them as “today’s Church”.

“How beautiful it is to see your enthusiasm, energy and commitment, and the joy you bring to Christian communities,” he said.

The number of regular worshippers in France has fallen from 35% of the population in 1960 to less than 5% today, while the number of priests has shrunk by two-thirds from 25,000 in 1990 to fewer than 9,000.

But in recent years there have been signs of a growing interest in religious tradition, with the number of adult baptisms more than doubling in five years to hit 10,000 in 2025.

Sexual abuse inside the Catholic Church has been widespread and dates back to the 1950s.

The issue was first given significant media attention in the 1980s in the US and Canada before similar stories emerged across the world, including widespread historic abuse in Ireland and the UK.

Reporting by the Boston Globe newspaper in the early 2000s, dramatised in the 2015 film Spotlight, exposed widespread abuse and how paedophile priests were moved around by Church leaders instead of being held accountable. It prompted people to come forward across the US and around the world.

A Church-commissioned report in 2004 said more than 4,000 US Roman Catholic priests had faced sexual abuse allegations in the last 50 years, in cases involving more than 10,000 children – mostly boys.

Leo’s predecessor Pope Francis tried to address the issue by holding an unprecedented summit on paedophilia in the Church, and by changing its laws to explicitly criminalise sexual abuse, but problems remain.

Later on Sunday, the Pope met staff and residents at the health facility at Lourdes, and took part in a torchlight procession.

It is the Pope’s first official visit to France since being chosen to lead the Roman Catholic Church in May 2025.

Popes have regularly visited France, a country with an avowedly secular modern political history but deep Catholic roots.