Belgian PM and king blast Pope Francis for church's sex abuse cover-up legacy in blistering welcome

Pope Francis delivers his message during a meeting with the authorities and the civil society in the Grande Galerie of the Castle of Laeken, Brussels, Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

BRUSSELS, Belgium -

Belgium’s prime minister on Friday blasted Pope Francis for the Catholic Church’s horrific legacy of clerical sex abuse and cover-ups in his country, demanding “concrete steps” to come clean with the past and put victims’ interests over those of the church.

Alexander De Croo's blistering welcome speech at the start of Francis’ visit was one of the most pointed ever directed at the pope during a foreign trip, where the genteel dictates of diplomatic protocol usually keep outrage out of public remarks. But even King Philippe had strong words for Francis, demanding the church work “incessantly” to atone for the crimes and help victims heal.

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Their tone underscored just how raw the abuse scandal still is in Belgium, where two decades of revelations of abuse and systematic cover-ups have devastated the hierarchy’s credibility and contributed to an overall decline in Catholicism and the influence of the once-powerful church.

Francis applauded at the end of De Croo’s speech and was expected to meet with victims in private later Friday. "This is our shame and humiliation,” he said in an improvised response.

“Today, words alone do not suffice. We also need concrete steps,” De Croo told Francis and an audience of royals, church officials, diplomats and politicians at Laeken Castle, the residence of Belgium’s royal family.

“Victims need to be heard. They need to be at the center. They have a right to truth. Misdeeds need to be recognized,” he said. “When something goes wrong we cannot accept cover-ups,” he said. “To be able to look into the future, the church needs to come clean on its past.”

Overall, victims welcomed the words from both sides. Survivor Emmanuel Henckens said that “to an extent they went to the crux of the evil. He said it was no longer possible to look the other way.”

But another abuse survivor, Koen Van Sumere, said it was now essential for the church to move beyond mere words and provide victims with substantial reparations. It was a reference to their call for Francis to establish a universal church system of reparations — something the Vatican would be loath to entertain since it has long insisted local churches handle any financial settlements with victims.

“If you want to move toward forgiveness and reconciliation it is not sufficient to only say ‘I am sorry’ but you have to bear the consequences it entails and you should compensate the damages," Van Sumere said. He said so far what the Belgian church had paid out ”amounted to alms" and that the settlement he received for his abuse didn't even cover the costs of his therapy.

Revelations of Belgium’s horrific abuse scandal have dribbled out in bits over a quarter-century, punctuated by a bombshell in 2010 when the country’s longest-serving bishop, Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, was allowed to resign without punishment after admitting he had sexually abused his nephew for 13 years.

Francis only defrocked Vangheluwe earlier this year, in a move clearly designed to remove a lingering source of outrage among Belgians before his visit.

Two months after Vangheluwe resigned, Belgian police staged what were then unprecedented raids on Belgian church offices, the home of recently retired Archbishop Godfried Danneels, and even the crypt of a prelate — a violation the Vatican decried at the time as “deplorable.”

Danneels was then caught on tape trying to persuade Vangheluwe’s nephew to keep quiet until the bishop retired. Finally, in September 2010, the church released a 200-page report that said 507 people had come forward with stories of being molested by priests, including when they were as young as 2. It identified at least 13 suicides by victims and attempts by six more.

Victims and advocates say those findings were just the tip of the iceberg and that the true scope of the scandal is far greater. Police eventually returned the documentation that was seized in the 2010 raids to the church, scuttling hopes for criminal investigations.

Despite everything that was known and already in the public domain, the scandal reared its head in a shocking new way last year, when a four-episode Flemish documentary, “Godvergeten” (Godforsaken) aired on public broadcaster VRT.

For the first time, Belgian victims told their stories on camera one after another, showing Flemish viewers the scope of the scandal in their community, the depravity of the crimes and their systematic cover-up by the Catholic hierarchy.

Significantly, both King Philippe and De Croo made their toughest remarks about abuse in Dutch — the language spoken in the once-staunchly Catholic Flanders where the abuse cases have gained the most notoriety — while the more neutral parts of their speeches were delivered in French and German.

De Croo's speech was also outside typical Vatican protocol, which normally would have seen only the king address the pope. As occurred in Canada, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed the pope alongside the country's governor-general, De Croo's office requested that he be able to speak, officials said.

The pope also referred to abuse in his remarks, insisting that the church was “addressing firmly and decisively” the problem by implementing prevention programs, listening to victims and accompanying them to heal.

But after the astonishing dressing-down by the prime minister and king, Francis went off-script to express the shame of the church for the scandal and voice his commitment to ending it.

“The church must be ashamed and ask for forgiveness and try to resolve this situation with Christian humility and put all the possibilities in places so that this doesn’t happen again,” Francis said. "But even if it were only one (victim), it is enough to be ashamed."

Victims have demanded the church do far more, including implementing robust reparations programs to compensate them for their trauma and pay for the lifelong therapy many need. Some penned a letter demanding such a reparations program, which they planned to deliver to Francis in their private meeting.

The prime minister, king and pope also referred to a new church-related scandal rocking Belgium, over so-called “forced adoptions,” which echoed earlier revelations about Ireland's so-called mother and baby homes.

After World War II and through to the 1980s, many single mothers were forced by the Belgian church to offer their newborns up for adoption. Often the mothers barely saw their babies before nuns took them away, and the babies were then placed for adoption, with money changing hands.

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For those adopted, it's nearly impossible to find their birth mothers, since the records have long ago disappeared.

Francis said he was “saddened” to learn of these practices, but said such criminality was “mixed in with what was unfortunately the prevailing view in all parts of society at this time.”

When Francis met with survivors of Ireland's forced adoptions in 2018, he issued a sweeping apology on behalf of the church. It's an issue the Argentine pope understands well given Argentina’s own history of forced adoptions of children born to purported leftists during the 1970s military dictatorship.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.