Brussels, Sep 27 (EFE).- Pope Francis, who was visiting Belgium Friday, said the abuse of minors is the Catholic Church’s “shame and humiliation”.
The pontiff was giving a speech to Belgian leaders at Laeken Castle, where he also met with the Belgian King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, on the first day of his visit to the country.
The Church “must be ashamed and try to resolve the situation with Christian humility and make every effort so this doesn’t happen again,” Pope Francis said, calling clerical sexual abuse “a scourge” for which the Church must “beg forgiveness”.
While King Philippe welcomed Pope Francis’ condemnation of the “unspeakable tragedy of sexual abuse” within the Church, he slammed the institution for taking “far too long” to address the issue.
“It has taken far too long for their cries to be heard and acknowledged; it has taken far too long to begin looking for ways to ‘repair’ the irreparable,” Philippe said, adding that efforts “to combat these horrific acts” must “continue resolutely and relentlessly”.
Belgian prime minister Alexandre de Croo also criticized the Church’s history of sexual abuse of minors and of forced adoptions during the middle of the 20th century.
According to the podcast Kinderen van de Kerk (Dutch for ‘Children of the Church’) by the Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws, broadcast in December last year, the Church sold around 30,000 children into adoption without the knowledge of their mothers, from the end of World War II to the 1980s.
While the prime minister acknowledged Pope Francis’ commitment “to a just and equitable approach”, De Croo insisted “there is still a long way to go” to restore trust in the Church, which he said had been “undermined.”
“Words alone are not enough, concrete steps must also be taken,” de Croo said. EFE
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