The archbishop of Lisbon met Friday with Pope Francis in a private audience at the Vatican to discuss “events in recent weeks that have marked the life of the Church in Portugal,” the Portuguese church said.
The two-sentence communique gave no further details, and the Vatican does not comment on the pope’s private audiences with individual churchmen. But suspicion about what they discussed immediately fell on recent allegations of child sex abuse by priests and alleged cover-ups by senior members of the Portuguese church.
