The Pope’s meetings with abuse survivors are regular and ongoing, the Vatican press office has confirmed. “I can confirm that several times a month, the Holy Father meets victims of sexual abuse both individually and in groups,” Greg Burke said. According to transcripts of Pope Francis’s conversations with Jesuits in January, Pope Francis told one group in Peru that he often meets survivors of sex abuse on Fridays. The transcripts were released in Italian and English by La Civiltà Cattolica with the Pope’s approval. Francis said the meetings, which do not always become public knowledge, show that the survivors’ process of recovery “is very hard. They remain annihilated. Annihilated.” The scandal of clerical sexual abuse demonstrates not only the “fragility” of the Catholic Church, he said, “but also – let us speak clearly – our level of hypocrisy”. In a discussion about spiritual “consolation” and “desolation”, terms in the Jesuit tradition of discernment, one Jesuit told Pope Francis that Catholics were “very disturbed” by sexual abuse scandals, and that it leads to “a lot of desolation in the Church”, especially among both male and female Religious. Abuse, Pope Francis replied, “is the greatest desolation that the Church is suffering”. The Jesuits in Chile did not ask the Pope directly about the ongoing controversy over the appointment in 2015 of Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, who had been accused of covering up the abuse committed by his mentor, Fr Fernando Karadima. Bishop Barros denies the claims.