In Brussels, Pope Francis asks bishops not to “cover up” sexual abuse in the Church

Pope Francis at the King Baudouin stadium, in Brussels, September 29, 2024.

“I ask bishops not to cover up abuse” And “to condemn the aggressors and help them heal from this disease”, launched Pope Francis on Sunday September 29 during a large mass at the national stadium in Brussels, at the end of a visit which highlighted the growing gap between a part of Belgian Catholics and Rome, in particular on the Place des women in the Church.

“Evil cannot be hidden, evil must be revealed in broad daylight, whether it is known… whether the aggressor is judged, whether he is a layman or a bishop”he added, remarks greeted by three rounds of applause in the stands.

“I think of the stories of many young people I have met” launched the pope in his homily, claiming to have “heard the suffering” of the seventeen victims of sexual violence he met on Friday against a backdrop of high expectations. “There is no room for abuse” he added.

During his three-day visit, the first by a pope to Belgium since John Paul II in 1995, Francis was also questioned about the reception of LGBT + people and the place of women in the world. Church, so many themes which highlighted the strong expectations of Belgian Catholics in the face of a doctrine considered by some to be too outdated.

On Saturday, his response on the place of women sometimes aroused disappointment and incomprehension within the Catholic University of Louvain, which castigated in a press release “a reductive position”.

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“I don’t understand why women can’t become priests. “It’s something that was established because it was anchored in society at that time, but now we’ve evolved.”told Agence France-Presse Alice Vanwijnsberghe, an 18-year-old student from Leuven, who came to mass after attending a festival with 6,000 young Catholics.

However, she recognizes that the subject is “delicate and complicated”, “because often, it can also create a schism in the Church”. The pope must leave Brussels at midday and give his traditional press conference aboard the plane taking him back to Rome, where he is expected around 3 p.m.

The World with AFP

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