on a cruel day for Pope FrancisBelgium’s king, its prime minister, and the rector of the Catholic university that had invited him here all slammed the institution he heads for numerous sins: covering up cases of clergy sexual abuse and women For being far behind the times when it comes to hugs. and the LGBTQ+ community in the church.
And all this before Francis even met those who suffered the most Catholic Church In Belgium – men and women who were raped and molested by priests in childhood. Seventeen survivors of abuse spent two hours with Francis on Friday evening, telling him about their trauma, shame and pain and demanding compensation from the church.
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Through it all, Francis expressed his remorse, asked for forgiveness and promised to do everything possible to ensure that such abuses never happen again. “This is a shame and a disgrace for us,” he said in his first public comments on Belgian soil.
Francis has previously visited countries with bad legacies of church wrongdoing. He issued a sweeping apology to Irish abuse survivors in 2018 and traveled to Canada in 2022 to atone for church-run residential schools that traumatized generations of Indigenous people.
Pope Francis delivered his message on Friday during a meeting with officials and civil society in the Grand Gallery of the Castle of Laeken in Brussels. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
But it is difficult to think of a day when the leader of the 1.3 billion strong Catholic Church will be held to account so harshly by the country’s highest institutional figures – royalty, government and academics – over the Church’s crimes and its apparent actions. Have faced public criticism. Indifferent responses to the demands of today’s Catholics.
Luc Sales, rector of the Catholic University of Leuven, whose 600th anniversary was the official reason for Francis’ visit to Belgium, told the pope that abuse scandals have weakened the church’s moral authority enough that it could reform if it wanted to. To regain its credibility and relevance.
“Wouldn’t the Church be a warmer place if women were given a prominent place, the most prominent place, even in the priesthood?” Sales asked the Pope.
“Wouldn’t the church in our region have moral authority if it were not so rigid in its approach to gender and diversity issues? And if it were, would it, like the university, open its arms more to the LGBTQ+ community?” he asked.
The comments certainly reflect the views of European social progressives. But they also reflected the Reformed Church, which Francis has adopted to a degree in an attempt to make the universal church more relevant and responsive to Catholics today.
The day began with King Philip welcoming Francis to Lycaen Castle, the residence of the Belgian royal family, and he called on the church to atone for crimes and help heal victims, citing abuse and forced adoption scandals. Demanded to work “continuously”.
he was followed Prime Minister Alexander De CrooThose who were also allowed to speak in exception to specific Vatican protocols. He used the opportunity of a face-to-face public encounter to demand “concrete steps” to clean up the full extent of the abuse scandal and put the interests of the victims above those of the Church.
He told the Pope, “Victims need to be heard. They need to be center stage. They have a right to the truth. Rapes need to be recognized.” “We cannot accept whitewash when something goes wrong,” he said. “To be able to look to the future, the Church needs to clear up its past.”
It was one of the sharpest welcome speeches ever delivered to the Pope during a foreign visit, where civilized dictates of diplomatic protocol generally keep public comments outrage-free.
But the tone underlined how raw the abuse scandal still is in Belgium, where revelations of two decades of abuse and systematic cover-ups have destroyed the credibility of the hierarchy and led to an overall decline in Catholicism and the influence of the once powerful church. Have contributed.
Overall, victims welcomed the words of both the Church and the state. Survivor Emmanuel Henckens said that “To a certain extent they had reached the root of evil. They said it was no longer possible to look the other way.”
But another abuse survivor, Koen Van Sumere, said it is now necessary for the church to provide substantial financial settlements to victims.
“If you want to move toward forgiveness and reconciliation, it’s not enough to just say ‘I’m sorry,’ you have to face the consequences and you have to make restitution for the harm,” Van Sumer said. He said that whatever the Belgian Church has paid so far is “equivalent to alms” and that the compensation he has received for abuse does not even cover the costs of his medical treatment.
The victims, 17 of whom met Francis at his Vatican residence on Friday evening, had written him an open letter demanding a universal system of church compensation for their suffering. In a statement after the meeting, the Vatican said Francis would study his requests.
“The Pope was able to listen to their suffering and get close to them, expressed his gratitude for their courage, and expressed a sense of shame for what they had to endure as children because of the priests to whom they were assigned.” He paid attention to the requests made to him so that he could “study them,” a Vatican spokesman said in a statement.
Revelations about Belgium’s horrific abuse scandal have been coming piecemeal for more than a quarter century, culminating in a bombshell in 2010 when the country’s longest-serving bishop, Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, was fired. He was allowed to resign without punishment after admitting that he had sexually abused his nephew. Till 13 years.
Francis fired Vangheluwe from the post earlier this year, in a move apparently designed to address a source of anger among Belgians ahead of his visit.
In September 2010, the church released a 200-page report stating that 507 people had come forward with stories of being molested by priests, including children as young as 2 years old. It identified at least 13 suicides by victims and six attempts by others.
Victims and advocates say these findings were just the beginning and the true scope of the scam is much larger.
In his remarks, Francis stressed that the Church is “firmly and decisively addressing” the problem of abuse by implementing prevention programs, listening to victims, and seeking to heal them.
But after shockingly abusive behavior by the prime minister and the king, Francis went off-script to express the church’s embarrassment over the scandal and his commitment to ending it.
“The Church must feel ashamed and apologize and try to resolve this situation with Christian humility and take into account all possibilities so that it does not happen again,” Francis said. “But even if it’s just one (victim), it’s enough to bring shame.”
The prime minister, king and pope also mentioned a new church-related scandal rocking Belgium over so-called “forced adoptions,” echoing earlier revelations about Ireland’s so-called mother and baby homes.
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After World War II and until the 1980s, many single mothers were forced by the Belgian Church to offer their newborns for adoption in exchange for money.
Francis said he was “saddened” to learn of these practices, but added that such criminality was “unfortunately mixed with the attitudes prevalent in all parts of society at this time.”
