{"id":625563,"date":"2026-06-07T06:48:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T06:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/625563\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T06:48:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T06:48:19","slug":"pope-leo-begins-spain-visit-with-praise-for-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/625563\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Leo begins Spain visit with praise for government"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Speaking to reporters on the plane before landing, the Pope said sexual abuse remained &#8220;an open wound&#8221; for the Church.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sanchez&#8217;s government and the Catholic Church in Spain signed an agreement in March <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c78e99pzr25o\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">to compensate victims after years of complaints<\/a> that religious leaders had failed to tackle the issue adequately.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A 2023 study by the Spanish ombudsman&#8217;s office, which investigates public complaints, estimated that 1.1% of the population had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of members of the clergy or individuals linked to the Church &#8211; the equivalent of 440,000 people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Church has contested these findings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">On Saturday, King Felipe hailed Pope Leo&#8217;s &#8220;clarity and firmness&#8221; on the issue, saying it was &#8220;essential in the process of healing and reparation of the damage inflicted&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking to reporters on the plane before landing, the Pope said sexual abuse remained &#8220;an open wound&#8221; for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-625563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}