After a stay of a few hours in Luxembourg, Pope Francis will arrive in Brussels on the evening of Thursday 26 September for a visit entitled “On the path of hope” which will end on Sunday morning with a mass at the King Baudouin stadium. Initially intended to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the Pope’s death, the visit was intended to be a celebration of the 600th anniversary of the Pope’s death.my The anniversary of the Catholic University of Louvain, which has been divided since 1968 into a Dutch-speaking wing and a French-speaking wing following a revolt by Flemish nationalist students, this apostolic trip is eagerly awaited by victims of sexual assault within the Belgian Catholic Church.
On September 5, several of them sent a letter to the Pope, inviting him to acknowledge their suffering, to put in place prevention tools and to open the Church archives. A meeting between Francis and fifteen victims is planned for Friday, at an undisclosed location, to allow, according to Vatican authorities, “a real exchange”The Belgian Bishops’ Conference is very discreet on this matter, especially with regard to the method of selecting the participants, who met on Saturday 21 September to prepare for the meeting.
Other men and women who have suffered abuse, as well as victims of forced adoptions, are expected to be present at a reception for the Pope at the royal palace in Laeken on Friday morning. In December 2023, the Flemish press revealed that at least thirty thousand babies, born to young unmarried women whose parents had sent them to religious institutions – particularly in the French department of Nord – to give birth there, had been forcibly kidnapped and sold to adoptive parents. This scandal lasted from the post-war period until the early 1980s.
Founder, more than thirty years ago, of the group Human rights in the Church, the Flemish priest Rik Devillé is very critical and deplores the secrecy surrounding the interview on Friday afternoon and the fact that the victims will be, according to him, “stuck in their previous role again”. “The Pope is already aware of all these cases. It would be good if, instead, he punished the perpetrators and took the allegations seriously.”, estimates the priest, now retired.
Avoiding a judicial investigation
Among those absent will be Joël Devillet, who was one of the first to draw attention to the issue of sexual violence in the Church when he published a book in 2009 revealing that, as a youth, he had been raped by the priest of his parish in Aubange, in the province of Luxembourg. He also explained that the ecclesiastical authorities had done everything possible to avoid a judicial investigation and that the bishop of Namur and future primate of Belgium, André-Joseph Léonard, had not reacted to the information that had reached him about the fate of the young boy, whose attacker then reoffended in another parish.
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