From September 26 to 29, Pope Francis visited Belgium. A passage during which he gave speeches on abortion and women which did not please the other side of the border. This Wednesday, October 16, 2024, more than 520 people sent an open letter to the country’s Catholic authorities to denounce them and ask to be rebaptized, reports the RTBF.
Among the controversial remarks, the sovereign pontiff had described the partial decriminalization of voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion) in Belgium as a “killer law”, even considering that doctors who perform abortions were “hired killers”.
A position considered “reductive”
During a visit to the Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain), Pope Francis this time mentioned the condition of women in a way that greatly displeased the management of the establishment. “What characterizes women, what is feminine, is not determined by ideologies. Dignity is guaranteed by an original law, inscribed in the flesh. The woman remains a woman. It’s ugly when the woman wants to be the man”, according to comments reported by RTL Info.
“We really deplore its reductive and very conservative position on the place of women in society” reacted the rector of the university, then recalling the “fierce fight” of the faculty against sexist and sexual violence. “Certain parts of his speech regarding the place of women in society, even in the Church, seem really very conservative to us and too much in relation to what we want to defend as a value,” she lamented.
A call for debaptization
All of these comments pushed the former general delegate for children’s rights, Bernard De Vos, to call for rebaptism as a protest at the beginning of October. In total, 524 people followed the movement this Wednesday.
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