ROME – Facing what he called the “real crisis” of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV stressed the importance of “an authentic and deep sensitivity and compassion” for victims, voicing frustration over delays in victim’s cases, but also warned of the risk of false allegations which, he said, can destroy a priest’s life.

“Victims must be treated with great respect and with an understanding that those who have suffered very deep wounds because of abuse, sometimes carry those wounds for their entire life,” the pontiff said in comments to Crux’s Elise Ann Allen.

“First and foremost,” the pope said of his approach, the church must foster “an authentic and deep sensitivity and compassion to the pain, the suffering that people have endured at the hands of church ministers, whether that be priests, or bishops, laity, religious, men or women, catechists, et cetera.”

At the same time, Leo said there’s also increasing attention to the rights of the accused in abuse cases.

“People are beginning to speak out more and more: The accused also have rights, and many believe that those rights have not been respected,” he said.

The pontiff stressed that in over 90 percent of cases, people who come forward with abuse allegations are telling the truth: “They are not making this up,” he said.

Yet, the pope said, it’s also true that “there have also been proven cases of some kind of false accusation. There have been priests whose lives have been destroyed.”

The pontiff’s comments came in an extended interview with Allen for the new book León XIV: ciudadano del mundo, misionero del siglo XXI, meaning “Leo XIV: Citizen of the World, Missionary of the 21^st Century,” released by Penguin Peru today.

Leo acknowledged that as important as it may be to punish abusers and to offer victims financial compensation, those steps alone aren’t enough.

“It would be naive for myself or for anyone to think that while we gave them some kind of financial settlement, or we dealt with the cause and the priest has been dismissed, as if those wounds are just going to go away because of that,” he said.

“People along the way have been deeply hurt, and we will try to attend to them as best we can and accompany them, and they are part of the church as well, those who still wish to be,” he said. “I know people who have abandoned the church because of the pain that they suffered, and their choice has to be respected.”

Leo XIV acknowledged a commonly voiced frustration among victims and critics of the church’s response to the abuse scandals that its legal procedures take too long to unfold, but said it isn’t necessarily obvious how to solve the problem.

“The law exists to protect the rights of all people. In order to have, as much as possible, a reliable system of justice that respects the rights of all, takes time,” he said.

Leo noted that secular judicial systems don’t necessarily move any faster.

“We live in Italy, I lived in Peru, even in the United States, many processes that go into the courts take years and years, and that’s just a fact,” he said.

Fundamentally, the pope, everyone’s rights matter.

“The fact that the victim comes forward and makes an accusation and the accusation presumably is accurate, that does not take away the presumption of innocence,” he said. “The priests also have to be protected, or the accused person has to be protected, their rights have to respected.”

The pontiff conceded that saying that may cause “greater pain for the victims,” and said the need to balance swift and sure punishment with adequate due process guarantees can place the church “in a bind.”

“The church has tried to make new legislation that would both speed up the process … [responding to] the victims and their pain, and their right to have that pain recognized in some kind of response from the church, but at the same time the respect of the accused. The protection of the rights of the accused party is also an issue.”

The pope said the church has to continue to improve at accompanying victims.

“I think that many of us are perhaps still novices learning about what is the best way to accompany these people in their pain,” he said. “I think there is one of the areas where we continue to need the help of professionals to assist us with that.”

As critically important as recovery from the abuse crisis is, Leo also said it’s important that the church not be entirely consumed by it.

“The church has a mission to preach the Gospel, and thanks be to God, the vast majority of people who are committed to the church, priests, and bishops, religious, have never abused anyone,” he said. “So, we can’t make the whole church focus exclusively on this issue, because that would not be an authentic response to what the world is looking for in terms of the need for the mission of the church.”

“There are many other people in the church who also have a right to be accompanied in whatever they are living and experiencing, and the church has to be with them as well,” the pope said. “It’s one more of the many challenges that I’m trying to find a way to deal with.”