After his arrival to Belgium in the rain on Thursday night, Pope Francis told civil authorities the next day to make peacemaking a priority, and voiced regret over recent scandals in the Belgian Church, including the crises of clerical sexual abuse and forced adoptions.
Speaking to national civil authorities Sept. 27, the pope highlighted the Church’s contribution to society through its charitable works, but acknowledged that the church must also reckon with “the fragility and shortcomings of her members, who are never fully up to the task entrusted to them since it is always beyond their capacity.”
Though often a force for good, the Church, he said, “lives in a specific culture, within the thinking of a given age that she sometimes helps to shape and to which at other times she is subjected; and her members do not always understand and live the message of the Gospel in all its purity and fullness.”
To this end, Pope Francis referred to the clerical abuse scandals that have marred the Church in Belgium, saying abuse is “a scourge that the Church is addressing firmly and decisively by listening to and accompanying those who have been wounded, and by implementing a prevention program throughout the world.”
In an off-the-cuff remark, he referred to the abuse scandals as a source of “shame” for the church.
“We think to the time of the Holy Innocents, and we think, what a tragedy, what the king did! But today, in the same church, there is this crime, and the church must be ashamed and try to resolve the situation with Christian humility and make every effort so this doesn’t happen again,” he said.
Noting that studies show most abuse happens in the family or sportive or educational environments, he said that in the church, “If there is only one, it is enough to be ashamed…this is our shame and our humiliation.”
He also said he was “saddened” to learn about the scandals surrounding forced adoptions in Belgium from the 1950s-1970s and 80s.
“In those poignant stories, we see how the bitter fruit of wrongdoing and criminality was mixed in with what was unfortunately the prevailing view in all parts of society at that time. This was so much the case that many believed in conscience that they were doing something good for both the child and the mother,” he said.
Both the Church and other societal actors, he said, were convinced that in order to overcome the stigma attached to being an unwed mother at the time, it was considered that “for the good of both the child and the mother that the child be given up for adoption.”
“There were even cases in which some women were not given the possibility of choosing between keeping their children or giving them up for adoption,” he said, saying this still happens in some cultures today.
Pope Francis prayed that God would help the Church in every era to find the strength to “never conform to the predominant culture, even when that culture uses, in a manipulative way, values derived from the Gospel, drawing from it inauthentic conclusions that cause suffering and exclusion.”
In recent years, the Catholic Church in Belgium has had to wade through not only the challenges of living in one of the most secular counties in Europe, but also the fallout of the clerical sexual abuse and forced adoption scandals.
Belgium has been particularly hard-hit by the abuse scandals, including the prominent case of Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, who was laicized by the Vatican in March. After charges first surfaced in 2010, Vangheluwe later admitted to several acts of sexual abuse, including some against his own nephews.
Recordings also emerged of the former Archbishop of Brussels, Cardinal Godfried Danneels, apparently discouraging one of Vangheluwe’s nephews from going public with his accusations, with the leaks sparking public impressions of a systematic cover-up.
Last year Dutch Belgium was rocked by the broadcast of a television documentary titled Godvergeten, or “Godforsaken,” documenting multiple cases of abuse by Catholic priests that drew massive interest.
That broadcast led to a new parliamentary inquiry in Flanders, and in May there was widespread backlash in Brussels after three priests accused of abuse were placed on a list of candidates for the archdiocese’s presbyteral council. Archbishop Luc Terlinden apologized, calling it a “grave mistake.”
Pope Francis is scheduled to meet 15 victims of abuse while in Belgium, but the details have not yet been released.
Forced adoptions in Belgium have also been adding pressure to the Catholic Church in recent years.
During the 1950s to 1980s, institutions run by nuns took in underage girls and unmarried women and gave their children up for adoption.
An estimated 30,000 children were taken from their mothers and sold to adoptive families without their mothers’ knowledge or consent, with some mothers denied the right to see their children, while others were told their children were stillborn.
The Belgian bishops apologized in 2023 and requested an independent inquiry after fresh testimonies arose from women and individuals claiming to have been sold by the Catholic Church to their adoptive family.
Pope Francis spoke to Belgian national authorities Friday after holding private audiences earlier that morning with King Philippe and Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.
In his speech, the pope lauded the role that Belgium played in the peace process following the Second World War, and the role it has assumed as a “bridge” between nations and peoples.
“How Europe needs Belgium to remind it that its history comprises peoples and cultures, cathedrals and universities, achievements of human ingenuity, but also many wars and the will to dominate that sometimes led to colonialism and exploitation,” he said.
Europe needs Belgium in order to follow the path of peace and fraternity, he said.
To this end, Francis said that Belgium serves as “a reminder to all others that when nations disregard borders or breach treaties by employing the most varied and untenable excuses, and when they use weapons to replace actual law with the principle of ‘might is right,’ then they open Pandora’s box, unleashing violent storms that batter the house, threatening to destroy it.”
In an off-the-cuff remark, the pope said, “Right now Belgium has a very important role. We are close, almost, to a world war.”
Peace and harmony, he said, are “never won once and for all,” but require consistent effort to maintain with care and patience.
“When human beings forget the memory of the past and its valuable lessons, they run the dangerous risk of once again falling backwards, even after having moved on, forgetting the suffering and appalling costs paid by previous generations,” he said.
Belgium, Pope Francis said, can serve as a living memory for Europe and it can also provide a continual, timely social and political development that is “both courageous and prudent” and which also “excludes from the future the idea and practice of war as a viable option with all its catastrophic consequences.”
He urged Belgium to set an example for Europe by recovering its “true identity” and once again investing in the future “by opening itself to life and hope by overcoming the demographic winter and the torments of war!”
“We must be practical about this, have children, have children!” he said, having given a similar charge to citizens of Luxembourg Thursday.
Francis closed his speech voicing hope that those holding public office would “know how to take up the responsibility, the risk and the honor of peace, knowing how to avoid the danger, disgrace and absurdity of war.”
He also prayed that those in authority would fear “the judgment of conscience, of history and of God, so that their hearts and minds will be converted so as always to put the common good first.”
He also reiterated his condemnation of the global arms trade, saying, “at this time when the economy has developed a lot, I want to underline that in some countries, the investment that makes the most profits is the investment in arms.”
