Just 10 days after Pope Francis was appointed head of the Catholic Church, he received an ominous gift from his predecessor — a large white box.
The then-76-year-old Pope Francis flew to the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo to meet with Pope Benedict XVI, who was just a month into his retirement.
There was an auspicious air to the meeting.
It was the first time two popes had met each other in more than 600 years.
The last recorded meeting had been in 1294, when the retired would-be hermit Pope Celestine V met his successor, Pope Boniface VIII — Celestine was executed less than a year later.
Pope Benedict XVI lived another nine years before dying of lung disease in 2022.
"Everything is in here," he told the newly appointed Pope Francis, as the two sat across from one another in the palace library.
The box between them on the table contained documents relating to what Pope Francis later described as the church's most painful abuse stories — "cases of abuse, corruption, dark dealings, wrongdoings".
"I have arrived this far, taken these actions, removed these people, now it's your turn," Pope Benedict told him.
Reports of abuse accelerating before Pope Francis's election
By the time Pope Benedict stepped down — citing his failing health — several high profile Catholics had been calling for his resignation for years.
Investigations into widespread church abuse and cover-ups had been receiving significant media attention since the mid-1990s.
Reports of abuse had accelerated.
From 2001 to 2010, about 3,000 priests were investigated by the church for their involvement in cases dating back decades.
The Holy See stated in 2009 that “somewhere between 1.5 per cent and 5 per cent of the Catholic clergy” had been involved in sexual abuse cases.
"The church is very conscious of the seriousness of the problem," it said.
Pope Benedict had inherited an avalanche of sexual abuse cases from his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who didn't believe or simply ignored credible complaints of sexual abuse by priests for years.
Pope Benedict was left dealing with a moral catastrophe.
In 2013 the International Criminal Court rejected a bid by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) to have the church investigated.
[francis video] In January of the same year, Australia launched its Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
This was the scene as Jorge Mario Bergoglio emerged to the waiting world as Pope Francis, the new head of the Catholic Church.
Church secrecy keeping abuse cases private
After his death, questions about how Pope Francis has handled abuse within the church remain.
Oxford University historian Dr Miles Pattenden said the secrecy surrounding the issue made it more difficult to gauge.
[pope francis]"One of the problems with assessing how he’s gone about handling it is that we don’t really know what’s said and done in private," he said.
"[The white box] typifies the problem for the church that many things necessarily have to remain confidential.
"That’s why Benedict handed the materials over to him personally.
"On the other hand, that lack of transparency is also a problem for the church because it leads to accusations of cover-ups, the church not caring and so on.
“And it’s very difficult for any leadership of any organisation to get the balance right between disclosure, accountability and confidentiality.”
In his autobiography, Pope Francis said he felt he was "being called to take responsibility for all the evil committed by certain priests" from the very beginning of his papacy.
"Even if just one case of abuse were discovered in the Church, it would be monstrous enough on its own," he said, adding any measures to seek forgiveness would never be enough.
"This is our disgrace and our humiliation."
"[The] echo of the silent scream of those little children who have found torturers in their father figures and spiritual guides will shake those hearts that have been anaesthetised by hypocrisy and power."
Despite the "significant" change in tone, experts told the ABC Pope Francis's handling of abuse was not always "wise".
Dr Pattenden said while he sympathised with the pope’s "dilemma", his judgement had "been shown to be unwise" on repeated occasions.
"His demeanour and his tone has in some ways been better than Benedict XVI, who was accused of being insufficiently compassionate towards victims," he said.
"Francis has met with victims, has been more open and emotional about the subject, which I think has been a welcome change of tone to a lot of people.
"On the other hand, there are a number of specific cases where Francis has proved to be or been accused of being inadequate in his response to very, very serious allegations."
'Serious questions to answer' when it comes to abuse cases
Pope Francis’s handling of abuse scandals was marred by controversy and repeated apologies.
In 2014, he instituted the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, meant to safeguard children and "vulnerable persons" from sexual abuse and help handle cases.
That same year, he reversed a decision to defrock an Italian priest accused of child sexual abuse — instead, the man should retire to "a life of prayer and humble discretion".
The priest was found guilty of sexually abusing children and sentenced to prison two years later.
In 2015, Pope Francis supported a Chilean bishop accused of covering up sexual abuse in that country.
[pell video]In both cases, Pope Francis would later state he had made "grave errors" and mishandled the situation.
At a summit in 2019, he promised to "spare no effort" when it came to bringing abusers within the church to justice.
Also in 2019 he abolished “pontifical secret” — a church law which kept sensitive information strictly confidential — in an effort to increase transparency surrounding abuse.
The same year, he announced former archbishop Theodore McCarrick would be defrocked.
McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, had faced repeated reports of sexual misconduct spanning decades before a 2017 Vatican investigation found he had abused adults and children.
Pope Francis denied accusations he knew of the allegations as early as 2013.
"I knew nothing, obviously, of McCarrick," he told Vatican News.
A 450-page Vatican report found Pope Francis was only aware of allegations relating to adults, and believed his predecessors had already dismissed them.
His stance on McCarrick changed when a former altar boy came forward with more accusations in 2017.
In 2022 he was again forced to defend himself, this time for his handling of Argentine bishop Gustavo Zanchetta.
Pope Francis had rejected past accusations about Zanchetta and given him a powerful role in the Holy See’s treasury, which removed him from Argentina.
Zanchetta was later sentenced to four and a half years in prison for sexual abuse of seminarians.
Later that year he did not strip a French cardinal of his privileges, even after the man admitted to abusing a 14-year-old girl.
The case against Cardinal Jeanne-Pierre Ricard was dropped due to the statute of limitations.
In January, the Vatican concluded its investigation into former Jesuit priest and artist Marko Rupnik, who was accused of sexually and psychologically abusing multiple women.
Pope Francis ordered the case against him to be reopened, but Rupnik continued to design logos for major church gatherings and met privately with the pope.
Rupnik’s art has featured in church buildings globally and was seen on the wall in Pope Francis’s apartment as recently as January this year.
An independent tribunal into his conduct was yet to begin.
Dr Pattenden told the ABC: "There are these various cases where Francis has serious questions to answer and answers have not been forthcoming."
"And in that sense he hasn’t really moved on from the problems that the church was accused of under Benedict XVI or John Paul II."
A change in tone lacking 'rigour' to handle church abuse
The church is still failing to deal with sexual abuse cases adequately, according to the Vatican’s child protection commission.
In its first report last October, the commission criticised the Vatican office tasked with handling complaints as being slow and secretive.
“The [Asia Oceania] Regional Group notes challenges in accurately identifying and addressing the true scale of abuse within Church institutions,” they said.
“[This is] due to a pervasive culture of silence, a reluctance to report abuse, and a general lack of education and awareness concerning safeguarding practices,” they said.
Asked about Pope Francis’s legacy when it came to sexual abuse, Dr Pattenden told the ABC the change in tone hadn’t come with a "greater rigour" within the church.
"One problem is that sexual abusers are sadly always going to be with us, so it’s very unlikely that any large organisation like the Catholic Church is ever going to be completely free [of them]," he said.
"But if the church does continue to improve its efforts, then Francis should be given some credit for that.
“I think [improvement] depends a very great deal on who the next pope is and what his priorities are."
"In some jurisdictions, like Australia, a great deal of pressure is already being put on the church … but that’s not the case all around the world.
"There’s plenty of scope for further scandals to emerge in different places."
