“The Church must be ashamed and ask for forgiveness,” Pope Francis declared this Friday about sexual violence in the Church. Visiting Laeken Castle, the royal couple’s residence in Brussels, the Holy Father added that we must “seek to resolve this situation with Christian humility, and do everything possible to ensure that this does not happen again.”
Francis, who had already promised “zero tolerance” on this subject, is due to receive at the end of the day, at the nunciature in Brussels, fifteen victims of rape or sexual assault by ecclesiastics in Belgium in the last century. A meeting “in complete discretion” according to the Belgian Church which says it wants to protect the anonymity of these people.
“Words are not enough today”
Friday morning, Francis also said he was “saddened” by the so-called “forced adoptions” scandal with the complicity of religious orders, a tragedy which affected thousands of Belgians between the end of the Second World War and the 1980s. .
Both sexual violence against minors and forced adoptions have “seriously damaged” the confidence of Belgians in the Church, assured Prime Minister Alexander De Croo. “Words are not enough today, concrete measures must be taken,” said the Flemish liberal leader.
Before the Pope, the Belgian King Philippe spoke of all the victims of the “irreparable”, “marked for life” by the crimes of ecclesiastics. “It took so long for their cries to be heard and recognized,” argued the sovereign.
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