Pope meets survivors at evening meeting, will study their requests
Pope Francis arrives to the Castle of Laeken in Brussels to meet Belgium’s King Philippe and Queen Mathilde on Sept. 27, 2024. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)
The pope’s day in Belgium on September 27 ended with him meeting at the nunciature with 17 survivors of abuse by clergy in Belgium.
“The participants were able to bring their stories and pain to the pope and expressed their expectations regarding the church’s commitment against abuse,” the Holy See press office said in a statement released late Sept. 27.
The pope thanked them for their courage in coming forward, expressed his feelings of shame for what they experienced and made note of their requests “so that he could study them,” the statement said.
The evening meeting, which was organised by the bishops’ conference, lasted more than two hours, taking place right after the pope returned from helping celebrate the 600th anniversary of the world’s oldest Catholic university, KU Leuven.
It also came after the pope faced frank and direct requests for “relentless” concrete action against abuse and for helping victims from the country’s prime minister and king during his morning meeting with Belgian authorities at the castle. “Words are not enough,” Prime Minister Alexander De Croo told the pope.
Belgium is still reeling from ongoing evidence of decades of abuse and cover-up by church officials after an independent inquiry report on abuse was published in 2010.
While Belgium’s parliament continues to seek clarity into how investigations into the sexual abuse of minors in the Catholic Church were handled, a Dutch-language newspaper based in Antwerp, Belgium, recently reported that between 1945 and the early 1980s at least 30,000 babies were forcibly taken from their mothers, who had been sent to special homes by their parents.
According to the Dec. 13 report by Het Laatste Nieuws, some mothers have claimed they were forced to work, forbidden to communicate with the outside world, subjected to humiliation and sexual violence, and forcibly sterilised. Some of the adopted children, who are now adults, have claimed they cannot find the records of their adoptions or trace their biological mothers.
Adoptive parents also paid the church-run organisations for the adoptions, which ranged from between 6,000 and 30,000 Belgian francs at the time, which is around $670-$3,300 in today’s purchasing power.
At a meeting earlier with Belgian authorities, Pope Francis said he was “saddened” to learn about a decadeslong practice of forcing unwed mothers housed in church-run institutions to give their newborns up for adoption.
“As the successor of the Apostle Peter, I pray to the Lord that the church will always find within herself the strength to bring clarity,” he said in his speech.
“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,” he said, with many believing in good conscience “that they were doing something good for both the child and the mother.”
- From on high: A rare glimpse from the top of St Peter’s baldachin - October 10, 2024
- Statistically speaking: How Pope’s Choices Change College of Cardinals - October 9, 2024
- In second week, synod to discuss authority in the church - October 8, 2024
