On the last day of his visit to Belgium, Pope Francis on Sunday, September 29, diverted attention from sexual violence within the Catholic Church by triggering a controversy about another very sensitive issue, that of voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion). He announced, during a mass celebrated in front of some 40,000 people at the King Baudouin stadium in Brussels – formerly the Heysel stadium – that he would begin, on his return to Rome, the process of beatification of the ex-king, died in 1993. “I call on the bishops of Belgium to help in this cause”he declared.
The day before, praying at Baudouin’s tomb, François had greeted “courage” of a man who, he added, had “chose to leave his post so as not to sign a deadly law”. A few hours later, on the plane taking him back to Rome, the Pope declared to journalists: “An abortion is homicide, the doctors who do this are, if you allow me the expression, hitmen. »
In March 1990, King Baudouin’s refusal to sign the law decriminalizing abortion, which parliamentarians had just adopted, opened a crisis at the top of the state. The country’s Basic Law states that “the king sanctions and promulgates the laws” but, believing that the text contravened his Catholic faith, the monarch had triggered a serious institutional problem.
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The prime minister at the time, the Flemish Christian Democrat Wilfried Martens, had to use his imagination and resort to another article of the Constitution which evokes a possible impossibility of ruling for the king. This provision, inspired by the English example and the dementia of King George III in 1810, provides that in the event of the sovereign’s mental incapacity to fulfill his functions, the government resumes all its attributions. Which was done. Even though Baudouin had obviously retained all his lucidity, the government itself signed the law and allowed the monarch to resume his functions… 36 hours later.
“A provocation”
The episode aroused astonishment, especially since the country had been debating for nine years the right way to reconcile the law and reality: in several judicial districts, abortions were carried out in full view of everyone without any sanction is imposed. Obviously influenced by his very pious Spanish wife, Fabiola de Mora y Aragon, Baudouin even threatened, at the time, to renounce the throne. He had previously consulted Pope John Paul II, who, however, gave him no advice.
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