A cruel day for Pope Francis, when the King of Belgium, the country's prime minister and the president of the Catholic university that brought him there were all torn apart by the institution he was headed to on charges of covering up a clergy sex abuse scandal. . We are far behind the times when it comes to the acceptance of women and the LGBTQ+ community in the church.
And that was before Francis met with those most affected by the Catholic Church in Belgium: men and women who were raped and sexually abused by priests as children. Seventeen abuse survivors spent two hours with Francis on Friday night, recounting their trauma, shame and pain, and demanding compensation from the church.
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Through it all, Francis expressed remorse, asked for forgiveness, and promised to take all possible steps to ensure that such abuse never happens again. “This is our shame and humiliation,” he said in his first public remarks on Belgian soil.
Francis has previously visited countries with tragic legacies of church misconduct. He issued a sweeping apology to abuse victims in Ireland in 2018 and will travel to Canada in 2022 to make amends for church-run boarding schools that traumatized generations of Indigenous people. Ta.
Pope Francis delivered his message on Friday during a meeting with authorities and civil society in the Grand Gallery of Laeken Castle in Brussels. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
But on a day when the leadership of the Catholic Church, with a population of 1.3 billion people, faced such strong public criticism from those in the highest institutions of the country, including the royal family, government and academia, for the church's crimes and its seeming It's hard to imagine. A tone-deaf response to the demands of today's Catholics.
Luc Sels, rector of the Catholic University of Leuven, whose 600th anniversary was the official reason for Francis' visit to Belgium, said the abuse scandal has seriously weakened the church's moral authority. , told the Pope that it would be good to reform if he wanted. To regain its credibility and relevance.
“Wouldn't the Church be a warmer place if women were given the most prominent and visible place in the priesthood?” Sells asked the Pope.
“Would our local churches have achieved moral authority if they had been less rigorous in their approach to issues of gender and diversity? And if they, like universities, had been more responsive to the LGBTQ+ community? “What if you spread it out?” he asked.
The comments certainly reflected the views of European social progressives. But they also reflect to some extent the reform-oriented Church that Francis has embraced, seeking to make the universal Church more relevant and responsive to Catholics today.
On this day, King Philippe welcomed Francis to Laeken Castle, the residence of the Belgian royal family, and cited scandals of abuse and forced adoption, calling on the Church to “continually work to atone for sins and help victims recover.” It started with a request for people to take action.
Prime Minister Alexander de Croo was then allowed to speak as an exception to typical Vatican protocol. He used the opportunity to meet in person in public to reveal the full extent of the abuse scandal and call for “concrete steps” to put the interests of victims ahead of those of the church.
“Victims need to be heard. Victims need to be at the center. Victims have the right to know the truth. Wrongdoing needs to be acknowledged,” the Pope said. “If something goes wrong, we cannot accept a cover-up,” he said. “In order to look to the future, the church needs to clean up its past.”
It was one of the sharpest welcome speeches ever delivered to a pope during a trip abroad, when polite rules of diplomatic protocol usually prohibit him from speaking in public.
But the tone emphasized how raw the abuse scandal remains in Belgium. In Belgium, two decades of revelations and systematic cover-ups of abuses have shattered class credibility and led to an overall decline in Catholicism and the once-powerful church's influence.
Overall, victims welcomed word from both the Church and the government. “To a certain extent they got to the heart of the evil. We can no longer turn a blind eye,” said survivor Emmanuel Henkens.
But Cohen van Smeer, another abuse survivor, said it was now essential for the church to offer significant financial settlements to victims.
“If we want to move towards forgiveness and reconciliation, it is not enough to say 'I'm sorry'; we must live with the consequences and repay the damages,” Van Smeer said. . He said the amounts paid so far by the Belgian church “amount to handouts” and that the settlement money received for the abuse did not even cover the cost of treatment.
Seventeen of the victims who met with Francis at the Vatican residence on Friday evening had written an open letter to him calling for the church's universal reparations system for trauma. The Vatican said in a statement after the meeting that Francis would consider their requests.
“The Holy Father was able to listen to and sympathize with their suffering, express his gratitude for their courage, express his shame for the suffering they suffered as children because of the priests entrusted to them, “We have noted that the Vatican has been asked to do the following:”
Revelations of Belgium's horrific abuse scandal have trickled down for a quarter of a century, but in 2010 the country's longest-serving bishop, Bishop of Bruges Roger VanHelwe, was denied punishment after admitting to sexually abusing his nephew. It was interrupted due to a bombshell incident in which his resignation was accepted. 13 years.
Francis only unlocked Van Helwe earlier this year, a move clearly intended to remove a lingering source of anger among Belgians ahead of his visit.
In September 2010, the church released a 200-page report saying 507 people had come forward to say they had been sexually abused by clergy, including when they were two years old. The report identified at least 13 victim suicides and six additional suicide attempts.
Victims and advocates say these findings are just the tip of the iceberg and that the true scope of the scandal is much larger.
In his remarks, Francis insisted that the church is “firmly and decisively addressing” the problem of abuse by implementing prevention programs, listening to victims and accompanying them in their healing process.
But after a stunning dressing down by the prime minister and king, Francis went off script and expressed the church's shame over the scandal and expressed his determination to end it.
“The Church must be ashamed, ask for forgiveness, resolve this situation with Christian humility and consider all possibilities to ensure that something like this never happens again,” Francis said. “But even if there was only one[victim]it would be shameful enough.”
The prime minister, king and pope also addressed the new church-related scandal rocking Belgium over so-called “forced adoptions”, echoing earlier revelations about so-called single-parent families in Ireland.
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After World War II and into the 1980s, many single mothers were forced by the Belgian church to give up their newborns for adoption in exchange for money.
Ms Francisco said she was “saddened” to learn of the practice, but said such criminal acts “unfortunately blend in with the prevailing views in all parts of society at this time”. .
