Pope wraps troubled visit to Belgium by praising victims and demanding abusers be judged

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BRUSSELS (AP) — Pope Francis demanded Sunday that sexually abusive clergy be judged and their bishops stop covering up their crimes as he ended a troubled visit to Belgium by responding to the outrage over the scandal here that has devastated the church’s credibility.

“Evil must not be hidden. Evil must be brought out into the open,” Francis told some 30,000 people at Belgium’s sports stadium, drawing applause repeatedly as the crowd took in what he was saying.

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 and suffering they endured and the tone-deaf response of the church when they reported the crimes.

Belgium has had a wretched legacy of abuse and cover-up, none more symbolic of the church’s hypocrisy than the case of Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe. He was allowed to quietly retire in 2010 after he admitted that he had sexually abused his nephew for 13 years.

Francis only defrocked him this year — 14 years later — in a move clearly seen as finally dealing with a problem before his arrival in Belgium.

Once here, he couldn’t escape the criticism. Belgium’s king demanded the church work “incessantly” to clean up the scandal, and the prime minister insisted that victims’ needs be placed first, in a remarkable dressing-down from the leadership of the once-staunchly Catholic country.

“In the church there is room for everyone, everyone, but everyone will be judged and there is no place for abuse. There is no place for the covering up of abuse,” Francis said in his homily. “I ask the bishops not to cover up abuse. Condemn the abusers and help them to recover from this disease of abuse.”

Francis’ visit to Belgium was always going to be difficult, given the country’s wretched legacy of 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 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 do best to 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.

Francis heard a similar call from the Francophone campus, where students staged a reading of an articulated critique of his landmark environmental encyclical “Praised Be” in which they called for a “paradigm shift” in the way the church views women.

They noted that the encyclical virtually ignores women, cites no female theologians and contributes to women’s “invisibility” in the church and society. Women have long complained they have a second-class status in the church, barred from the priesthood and positions of power despite doing the lion’s share of the work educating the young, caring for the sick and passing on the faith.

Francis, an 87-year-old Argentine Jesuit, said he liked what they said. But he repeated his frequent refrain about women being the “fertile” nurturers who complement men, and that regardless “the church is woman.”

His words drew a remarkable rebuke from the Catholic university that invited him. As soon as he finished speaking, Louvain issued a statement expressing its “incomprehension and disapproval” of his views on women, which it said were “deterministic and reductive.”

“We cannot agree on his position for sure,” said rector Françoise Smets. “We are fighting against discrimination for women, and we would like women to have another role in the society and in the church also.”

Valentine Hendrix, a 22-year-old international relations masters student at Louvain, told reporters that students had hoped that Francis might respond positively to their appeal. While others applauded at the end of Francis’ remarks, she refused and said his comments on abortion and women’s role meant that he had “given up on a committed dialogue.”

“We had expectations, even if we saw that he disappointed us in just a few hours,” she said.

Francis has made several reforms during his 11-year pontificate, allowing women to serve as acolytes, giving them the vote in his periodic synods, or meetings, and appointing several women to high-ranking positions in the Vatican. He has said women must have greater decision-making roles in the church.

But he has ruled out ordaining women as priests and has refused so far to budge on demands to allow women to serve as deacons, who perform many of the same tasks as priests. He has taken the women’s issue off the table for debate at the Vatican’s upcoming three-week synod because it’s too thorny to be dealt with in such a short time. He has punted it to theologians and canonists to chew over into next year.

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