Brussels:Pope Francis demanded on Sunday that priestly sexual abusers be judged and their bishops stop covering up their crimes as he ended a troubled visit to Belgium by praising the courage of survivors of a scandal that has devastated the church's credibility. Evil must be brought out into the open, Francis told some 30,000 people at Belgium's main sports stadium, drawing applause repeatedly as the crowd took in what he was saying. There is no place for abuse. There is no place for covering up abuse.
Francis deviated from his prepared homily to respond to the meeting he held with 17 abuse survivors on Friday night, where he heard first-hand of the trauma they endured and the tone-deaf response of the church when they reported the crimes. Pope Francis wrapped up a troubled visit to Belgium on Sunday with a Mass to beatify a 17th-century mystic, after dashing the hopes of one of Europe's most storied Catholic universities by doubling down on his traditional views on women and abortion.
Francis was celebrating a Mass under a spectacular sun in Brussels' sports stadium before heading back to Rome. The stadium is named for King Baudouin, whom Francis had praised for having abdicated for a day in 1990 rather than give his assent to a parliament-approved bill legalizing abortion. Francis' unscheduled visit to pray at the king's tomb and declaration that the legislation was homicidal were among several gestures in this once staunchly Catholic country that unnerved its secularised young people, many of whom have turned away from the faith.
Nevertheless, the stadium which had a capacity of 37,000 for the Mass was nearly full for Francis' Mass. The crowd roared when Francis arrived in his popemobile and stopped to kiss babies passed up to him. Sunday's Mass was to beatify Spanish nun Ana de Jesus, who made a vow of chastity at 10, entered religious life the following year and helped St. Teresa of Avila reform the Carmelite religious order. The Vatican is holding her up as a model of someone who lived through a time of scandal and brought people back to the faith.
Francis' visit to Belgium was always going to be difficult, given the country's wretched legacy of clerical sexual abuse and overall secularizing trends which have emptied its majestic cathedrals and churches. But it's unclear if he or his entourage expected such sharp public expressions of outrage from the king on down about the abuse scandal or the pointed calls for reform from Belgium's intellectual elite.
The main reason for the trip was to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the Leuven/Louvain Catholic University, the oldest Catholic university in the world and long the Vatican's academic fiefdom in Belgium. But the rector of the Dutch campus told Francis that the abuse scandal had so harmed the church's moral authority that it would best reform if it wants to regain credibility and relevance. Rector Luc Sels suggested that opening up greater roles for women including the priesthood and being more welcoming to LGBTQ+ Catholics would be a good place to start.