The
Pope was read a letter from university professors and students
detailing some of the most consequential issues of modern times during
his visit to the Catholic university in Leuven.
These included
social inequality, social injustice, the climate crisis and the role of
women within the Catholic Church - where it was put to the pontiff that
there were no women at the top of the church and that their intellectual
contribution had been disregarded.
The pope faced much criticism on his visit to Belgium: for covering
up cases of clergy sex abuse and being far behind the times on embracing
women and the LGBTQ+ community in the church.
And that was all
before Francis met with the people most harmed by the Catholic Church in
Belgium — the men and women who were raped and molested by priests as
children. Seventeen abuse survivors spent two hours with Francis on
Friday evening, telling him of their trauma, shame and pain and
demanding reparations from the church.
Through it all, Francis
expressed his remorse, begged forgiveness and promised to do everything
possible to make sure such abuses never occur again. “This is our shame
and humiliation,” he said in his first public remarks on Belgian soil.
Francis has visited countries with wretched legacies of church
wrongdoing before. He made a sweeping apology to Irish abuse survivors
in 2018 and travelled to Canada in 2022 to atone for the church-run
residential schools that traumatised generations of Indigenous peoples.
But
it is hard to think of a single day where the leader of the 1.3-billion
strong Catholic Church had been subjected to such strong, public
criticisms from a country's highest institutional figures — royalty,
government and academia — over the church’s crimes and its seemingly
tone deaf responses to the demands of today’s Catholics.
Luc Sels,
the rector of Leuven Catholic University, the 600th anniversary of
which was the official reason for Francis’ trip to Belgium, told the
pope that the abuse scandals had 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 a
prominent place, the most prominent place, also in priesthood?” Sells
asked the pope.
“Wouldn’t the church in our region gain moral
authority if it were not so rigid in its approach to gender and
diversity issues? And if it did, like the university does, 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 has embraced, to a
degree, in seeking to make the universal church more relevant and
responsive to Catholics today.
The day began with King Philippe
welcoming Francis to Laeken Castle, the residence of Belgium’s royal
family, and citing the abuse and forced adoption scandals in demanding
the church work “incessantly” to atone for the crimes and help victims
heal.
He was followed by Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who was also
allowed to speak in an exception to typical Vatican protocol. He used
the opportunity of a face-to-face public encounter to demand “concrete
steps” to come clean with the full extent of the abuse scandal and put
victims’ interests over those of the church.
“Victims need to be
heard. They need to be at the centre. They have a right to truth.
Misdeeds need to be recognised,” he told the pope. “When something goes
wrong we cannot accept cover-ups,” he said. “To be able to look into the
future, the church needs to come clean on its past.”
It was one
of the most pointed welcome speeches ever directed at the pope during a
foreign trip, where the genteel dictates of diplomatic protocol usually
keep public remarks outrage-free.
But the tone underscored just how raw the abuse scandal still is in
Belgium, where two decades of revelations of abuse and systematic
cover-ups have devastated the hierarchy’s credibility and contributed to
an overall decline in Catholicism and the influence of the
once-powerful church.
Overall, victims welcomed the words from
both church and state. Survivor Emmanuel Henckens said that “to an
extent they went to the crux of the evil. He said it was no longer
possible to look the other way.”
But another abuse survivor, Koen
Van Sumere, said it was now essential for the church to provide victims
with substantial financial settlements.
“If you want to move
toward forgiveness and reconciliation it is not sufficient to only say
‘I am sorry’ but you have to bear the consequences it entails and you
should compensate the damages,” Van Sumere said. He said so far what the
Belgian church had paid out ”amounted to alms” and that the settlement
he received for his abuse didn’t even cover the costs of his therapy.
The victims, 17 of whom met with Francis at the Vatican residence
Friday evening, had penned an open letter to him demanding a universal
system of church reparations for their traumas. In a statement after the
meeting, the Vatican said Francis would study their requests.
“The
pope was able to listen and get close to their suffering, expressed
gratitude for their courage, and the feeling of shame for what they
suffered as children because of the priests to whom they were entrusted,
noting the requests made to him so that he could study them," said a
statement from the Vatican spokesman.
Revelations of Belgium’s
horrific abuse scandal have dribbled out in bits over a quarter-century,
punctuated by a bombshell in 2010 when the country’s longest-serving
bishop, Brugge Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, was allowed to resign without
punishment after admitting he had sexually abused his nephew for 13
years.
Francis only defrocked Vangheluwe earlier this year, in a move
clearly designed to remove a lingering source of outrage among Belgians
before his visit.
In September 2010, the church released a
200-page report that said 507 people had come forward with stories of
being molested by priests, including when they were as young as 2. It
identified at least 13 suicides by victims and attempts by six more.
Victims
and advocates say those findings were just the tip of the iceberg and
that the true scope of the scandal is far greater.
In his
remarks, Francis insisted that the church was “addressing firmly and
decisively” the abuse problem by implementing prevention programs,
listening to victims and accompanying them to heal.
But after the astonishing dressing-down by the prime minister and
king, Francis went off-script to express the shame of the church for the
scandal and voice his commitment to ending it.
“The church must
be ashamed and ask for forgiveness and try to resolve this situation
with Christian humility and put all the possibilities in places so that
this doesn’t happen again,” Francis said. “But even if it were only one
(victim), it is enough to be ashamed.”
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/09/28/pope-francis-meets-with-students-at-catholic-university-in-leuven
