On June 13, Pope Francis met for 90 minutes with eight British and Irish men who were victims of abuse in a junior seminary in England in the 1960s and 1970s. The seminary, now closed, was run by the Comboni Missionaries.

A September 13 meeting between the abuse survivors and Comboni Missionaries “was much more positive than I had imagined it was going to be,” said one of the victims. “They begged for our forgiveness; I didn’t expect it to be as heartfelt as it was.”