Father Hans Zollner, SJ / X
ROME // In a wide-ranging interview, Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, one of the Catholic Church’s foremost experts in safeguarding and clerical sexual abuse prevention, offered an insightful assessment of both the spiritual and institutional challenges facing the Church as it continues to reckon with the sexual abuse crimes committed by some of its own.
Speaking in Rome with Kelsey Reinhardt, director of Media & Evangelization at CatholicVote, Fr. Zollner — founder and director of the Institute of Anthropology for Interdisciplinary Studies on Human Dignity and Care at the Pontifical Gregorian University — shared hard-won insights drawn from decades of listening to survivors, reforming structures, and confronting the Church’s failures.
“I’m a German Jesuit. I’m a theologian, psychologist and psychotherapist by trade,” Fr. Zollner began. “I have been a professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University for 22 years now, and I have worked in the area of safeguarding full-time more or less over many years.”
The institute he directs was originally established as the Center for Child Protection and was restructured in 2021 into a full academic institute “precisely to further the educational and the research aspects when it comes to all what can be done in terms of safeguarding.”
For Fr. Zollner, this mission is not only professional — it is spiritual. Describing his early experiences with survivors, he explained that many victims told him the abuse itself, as horrific as it was, was not the only source of pain.
“For them, the more difficult in many cases [was] when they were not listened to by Church leaders, bishops, and provincials,” he said.
Fr. Zollner recounted how survivors who had once been devout Catholics — altar servers, students in Catholic schools — found themselves betrayed by the very institutions they trusted.
“To realize that this is such a breach of trust,” he said, “that it is very difficult to continue in life, that it is very difficult to continue in faith and in adherence to the Church … for me it was a conversion experience.”
Some victims, he acknowledged, do find peace and even reconciliation through community support, therapy, and faith. But many others cannot even enter a church building.
“Others despise the Church and any type of faith and any credibility is gone for them,” he said. “We have to live with [this], as we accompany these people — as aggressive, as enraged, as uncomfortable as they may be for us.”
Yet Zollner has also seen moments of redemption, particularly among Church leaders who “did not run away because of the advice of their lawyers not to listen to victims.” Some bishops, he noted, chose to “listen really with the heart,” and for them, too, it became “a very important conversion experience.”
Over the past 15 years, Fr. Zollner has witnessed what he calls a “qualitative change” in the Church’s response.
“In the 30 years or so since the cases became public … there was always a local response,” he said. “Especially through Pope Benedict’s insistence on a different type of approach … and in Pope Francis’s furthering and improving the response … we have seen a lot more countries and more institutions and of course leaders … becoming much more aware.”
At one point in the interview, Reinhardt referenced a moving letter distributed to cardinals before the most recent conclave by an Italian priest who had been abused in a minor seminary. “It was easier for me to forgive the person who abused me … than it was to forgive those who protected him,” the priest wrote.
“That letter speaks very much to the experience of many victims with whom I have been in contact,”Fr. Zollner replied. “Many of them said that more difficult to bear was the lack of responsiveness and the lack of consistency when it came to the Church leadership’s taking up the allegations.”
Fr. Zollner stressed the need for rigorous formation and psychological screening at the entry level for seminarians — something St. John Paul II also called for in 1992. “This in principle is in place,” he noted, especially in countries like the United States and in much of Europe. But screening alone is not enough.
But he warned that “most clergy that have abused have not abused when they were 25 or 26 years old right after ordination. They have abused when they were about 40 years old or older for the first time … So the question is: how do we support and how do we insist on ongoing permanent formation and education of clergy after ordination?”
While canon law mandates a preliminary investigation and can authorize temporary suspension of a priest once allegations are made, Fr. Zollner is clear that the pastoral dimension cannot be ignored.
“Canon law doesn’t talk about empathy, doesn’t talk about compassion,” he said. “As a bishop, as a provincial, as a priest, you also have to go beyond the sheer legal or canonical implications. You are also a pastor … you need to listen to victims of abuse — not only hearing but really listening with the heart.”
Responding to a question regarding the state of sex abuse prevention in places like Latin America and Africa, the German Jesuit acknowledged significant disparities across the globe. In under-resourced regions, his institute’s training and online courses aim to provide practical tools and formation.
“We have not realized yet that this is not something that you can deny, that you can run away from, but you have to face it squarely,” he also warned. “There is no way to establish effective safeguarding measures if you don’t come to the understanding that victims and survivors need to be listened to.”
Fr. Zollner rejected ideological divisions within the episcopate as a reliable predictor of response quality.
“In any country in this world, there are liberal and progressive or conservative bishops who are neglectful and have been so for many years,” he said. “And we need to work to be more consistent in this area.”
In concluding remarks, Fr. Zollner addressed both survivors and the broader Catholic faithful.
“I would hope that victims and survivors who are listening to this are really encouraged to come forward … because for many survivors and victims this is crucial also for coming to some type of healing.”
He added: “It’s not only the Church leaders who need to change our attitude. It’s also all of us… all the people in the pews. Everybody can do something. It is his or her responsibility … so that the Church is a safer place, and we are following more closely the footsteps of Jesus Christ who calls us to be there for all those who are vulnerable and who have been wounded.”
