Pope Francis acknowledged Tuesday that priests and bishops have been sexually assaulting nuns and said that he will continue to fight to fix the problem.

"It's a path that we've been on," Francis said on a plane home from the United Arab Emirates, per The Associated Press.

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He said his predecessor, Pope Benedict, had taken action against an order in France where he said abuse of nuns had amounted to "sexual slavery" but also acknowledged that more needed to be done.

"Pope Benedict had the courage to dissolve a female congregation which was at a certain level, because this slavery of women had entered it — slavery, even to the point of sexual slavery — on the part of clerics or the founder," he said.

“Should we do something more? Yes. Is there the will? Yes. But it’s a path that we have already begun.”

The Catholic Church for decades has been dealing with scandals involving priests who sexually abused young people, but has only more recently been dealing with issues of abuse involving adults.

Francis has planned a meeting of the presidents of all the Catholic bishops’ conferences in the world this month to discuss the sexual abuse scandals rocking the church.