Pope is approached by Belgian King and abuse victims over scandals and failure to respond

In a brutal day for Pope Francis, the king of Belgium, his prime minister and the rector of the Catholic university that invited him here were implicated in the institution he leads for a series of sins: the cover-up of sexual abuse cases and sexual abuse by clergy are far behind the times when it comes to the inclusion of women and the LGBTQ+ community in the church.

And all this before Francis met the people who were harmed most by the Catholic Church in Belgium – the men and women who were raped and abused as children by priests. 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.

New poll results show Argentina is seeing a decline in popularity with Pope Francis

In doing so, Francis expressed his remorse, pleaded for forgiveness and promised to do everything to ensure that such abuses never occur again. “This is our shame and humiliation,” he said in his first public comments on Belgian soil.

Francis has previously visited countries with deplorable legacies of ecclesiastical misconduct. He issued a full apology to Irish abuse survivors in 2018 and traveled to Canada in 2022 to atone for church-run residential schools that had traumatized generations of Indigenous people.

But it is hard to imagine a single day when the head of the 1.3 billion-member Catholic Church would face such harsh public criticism from a country’s highest institutional figures – royalty, government and academia – for the Church’s crimes and exposed to their apparent crimes was a deaf response to the demands of today’s Catholics.

Luc Sels, the rector of the Catholic University of Leuven, whose 600th anniversary 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 she wanted to do so in order 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, including in the 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, like the university, it opened 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 some extent, trying to make the universal church more relevant and responsive to today’s Catholics.

The day began with King Philippe welcoming Francis to Laeken Castle, the residence of the Belgian royal family, and, citing the abuse and forced adoption scandals, called on the church to work “ceaselessly” to atone for the crimes and help the victims heal to help.

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 public meeting to call for “concrete steps” to clarify the full extent of the abuse scandal and to put the interests of the victims above those of the church.

“Victims need to be heard. You have to be the center of attention. You have a right to the truth. Misdeeds must be acknowledged,” he told the pope. “If something goes wrong, we cannot accept cover-ups,” he said. “In order to be able to look into the future, the church must come to terms with its past.”

It was one of the most pointed welcome speeches ever given to the pope during a foreign trip, where the genteel dictates of diplomatic protocol typically keep public statements free of outrage.

But the tone underscored how dire the abuse scandal still is in Belgium, where two decades of abuse revelations and systematic cover-ups have destroyed the credibility of the hierarchy and contributed to an overall decline in Catholicism and the influence of the once-powerful church.

Overall, victims welcomed the words of both church and state. Survivor Emmanuel Henckens said they “got to the core of the evil to some extent. He said it was no longer possible to look away.”

But another abuse survivor, Koen Van Sumere, said it was now crucial for the church to offer victims substantial financial compensation.

“If you want to move towards forgiveness and reconciliation, it is not enough to just say ‘I’m sorry,’ you have to face the consequences that it brings and you should make up for the damage,” Van said Sumeria. He said that the payments made so far by the Belgian church amounted to “alms” and that the compensation he received for his abuse did not even cover the costs of his therapy.

The victims, 17 of whom met with Francis at the Vatican residence on Friday evening, had written an open letter to him calling for a universal system of ecclesiastical reparation for their traumas. In a statement after the meeting, the Vatican said Francis would consider their requests.

“The Pope had the opportunity to listen and approach their suffering. He thanked them for their courage and was ashamed of what they had suffered as children because of the priests to whom they were entrusted “they were able to study,” a statement from the Vatican spokesman said.

Revelations about Belgium’s horrific abuse scandal have leaked out in fits and starts for over a quarter of a century, punctuated by a bang in 2010 when the country’s longest-serving bishop, Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, was allowed to resign without penalty after admitting he was guilty of having sexually abused his nephew for 13 years.

Francis only removed Vangheluwe from office earlier this year, a move clearly aimed at eliminating a persistent source of outrage among Belgians ahead of his visit.

In September 2010, the church released a 200-page report that said 507 people had reported stories of harassment by priests, even as young as two years old. It 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 far greater.

In his remarks, Francis stressed that the church is “decisively and decisively addressing” the problem of abuse by implementing prevention programs, listening to victims and accompanying them in healing.

But after the stunning vilification from the prime minister and the king, Francis deviated from the script to express the church’s shame at the scandal and his determination to end it.

“The church must be ashamed and ask for forgiveness and try to resolve this situation with Christian humility and create every possibility so that something like this does not happen again,” Francis said. “But even if it was just one (victim), it would be enough to be ashamed.”

The prime minister, king and pope also referred to a new church-related scandal rocking Belgium over so-called “forced adoptions,” which echoed earlier revelations about Ireland’s so-called mother-and-child homes.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

After World War II and into the 1980s, many single mothers were forced by the Belgian church to give their newborns up for adoption, with the money changing hands.

Francis said he was “sad” to learn of these practices, but said that this criminality was “mixed with the view unfortunately prevalent in all parts of society at the time.”