The Pope is being grilled by the King of Belgium and abuse victims over scandals and lack of response

On a brutal day for Pope Francis, the king of Belgium, its prime minister and the rector of the Catholic university that invited him here, all framed in the institution he leads for a whole spectrum of sins: for covering up cases of clergy sexual abuse and being far behind the times of including women and the LGBTQ+ community to the Church.

And all this before Francis met with those most harmed by the Catholic Church in Belgium – men and women who were raped and molested by priests as children. On Friday evening, seventeen victims of violence spent two hours with Francis, telling him about their traumas, shame and pain, and demanding redress from the Church.

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Through it all, Francis expressed remorse, begged for forgiveness and promised to do everything in his power to ensure that such abuses never happen again. “This is our shame and humiliation,” he said in his first public appearances on Belgian soil.

Francis has already visited countries with a sorry legacy of Church misconduct. In 2018, he issued a broad apology to Irish victims of violence, and in 2022 he traveled to Canada to atone for church-run residential schools that have traumatized generations of indigenous people.

But it is difficult to imagine a single day in which the leader of the 1.3 billion-member Catholic Church would be subjected to such harsh public criticism from the country’s highest institutional figures – members of the royal family, government and academia – because of the Church’s crimes and its apparently tone-deaf responses to the demands of contemporary Catholics.

Luc Sels, rector of the Catholic University of Leuven, whose 600th anniversary was the official reason for Francis’ trip to Belgium, told the pope that abuse scandals have so weakened the church’s moral authority that it would do well to reform if it wants to regain its credibility and relevance. .

“Wouldn’t the Church be a warmer place if women were given an important place, the most important place, also in the priesthood?” Sells asked the pope.

“Wouldn’t the Church in our region gain moral authority if it weren’t so rigid in its approach to gender and diversity issues? What if it were, like the university, would it open its arms more to the LGBTQ+ community?” he asked.

The comments certainly reflected the views of European social progressives. But they also reflected the reform-minded Church that Francis had embraced to some extent in an effort to make the universal Church more relevant and relevant to today’s Catholics.

The day began with King Philip greeting Francis at Laeken Castle, the residence of the Belgian royal family, and citing abuse and forced adoption scandals, demanding that the church “work relentlessly” to atone for the crimes and help victims heal.

He was followed by Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who was also allowed to speak as an exception to typical Vatican protocol. He used the opportunity for a direct public meeting to demand “concrete steps” to expose the full scale of the abuse scandal and put the interests of victims ahead of those of the Church.

“Victims must be listened to. They need to be given the spotlight. They have the right to the truth. Transgressions must be recognized,” he told the pope. “When something goes wrong, we cannot accept a cover-up,” he said. “In order to look to the future, the Church must cleanse itself of its past.”

It was one of the sharpest welcome addresses ever addressed to a pope during his foreign tour, where the elegant dictates of diplomatic protocol usually protect public remarks from outrage.

But the tone underlined how raw the abuse scandal still is in Belgium, where two decades of exposing abuses and systematically covering them up have devastated the credibility of the hierarchy and contributed to the overall decline of Catholicism and the influence of the once-powerful Church.

Overall, the victims welcomed the words of both Church and State. Survivor Emmanuel Henckens said that “to some extent they got to the bottom of the evil. He said you can’t look the other way anymore.”

But another survivor of violence, Koen Van Sumere, said it was now crucial for the church to provide significant financial compensation to victims.

“If you want to move closer to forgiveness and reconciliation, it is not enough to just say ‘I’m sorry,’ but you must bear the consequences that come with it and you should compensate for the damage caused,” Van Sumere said. He said that what the Belgian church has paid out so far “is alms” and that the compensation he received for the abuse did not even cover the costs of his therapy.

The victims, 17 of whom met Francis at the Vatican residence on Friday evening, wrote him an open letter demanding a universal system of church reparations for their traumas. In a statement after the meeting, the Vatican said Francis would consider their requests.

“The Pope was able to listen and get close to their suffering, expressed gratitude for their courage and a sense of shame for what they suffered in childhood because of the priests to whom they were entrusted, noting the requests addressed to him so that they could study them,” said the Vatican spokesman.

Reports of Belgium’s horrific abuse scandal leaked in pieces for a quarter of a century, punctuated by the bombshell in 2010 when the country’s longest-serving bishop, the Bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, was allowed to resign without penalty after admitting he had sexually abused his husband. nephew for 13 years.

Francis only dismissed Vangheluwe from his position earlier this year, in a move clearly aimed at removing a lingering source of outrage among Belgians ahead of his visit.

In September 2010, the Church released a 200-page report showing that 507 people came forward with stories of abuse by priests, including those as young as 2 years old. At least 13 suicide victims were identified and another six attempted suicides.

Victims and supporters say these findings are just the tip of the iceberg and the true scope of the scandal is much larger.

In his remarks, Francis emphasized that the Church has “decidedly and decisively” addressed the problem of abuse by implementing prevention programs, listening to victims and accompanying them in their healing process.

But after a stunning rebuke from the prime minister and the king, Francis deviated from the script to express the church’s shame over the scandal and his commitment to its plight.

“The church must be ashamed and ask for forgiveness and try to resolve this situation with Christian humility and create all possibilities so that it does not happen again,” Francis said. “But even if it was just one victim, it’s enough to be ashamed of yourself.”

The prime minister, king and pope also addressed a new church scandal that has rocked Belgium over so-called “forced adoptions”, which echoes earlier reports about Irish so-called mother and baby homes.

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After World War II and until the 1980s, the Belgian church forced many single mothers to give up their newborns for adoption, and the money changed hands.

Francis said he was “saddened” to learn of the practice, but added that this type of crime was “confused with what was unfortunately the prevailing view in all parts of society at the time.”