Pope Francis has asked the Catholic bishops of Spain to meet with him in Rome on November 28, to discuss the sex-abuse scandal in their country.
The papal summons follows the Spanish bishops’ public apology after an independent commission estimated that 230,000 Spaniards had been sexually abused by priests over the page 80 years.
Pope Francis called a similar meeting of bishops from Chile in 2018, following the eruption of the sex-abuse scandal there, which peaked after the Pope denied having any knowledge of complaints against a bishop who had sheltered a notorious abuser. In the aftermath of that 2018 meeting, all 31 active members if the Chilean bishops’ conference offered their resignations.