(BELGIUM)
Barron's [New York NY]
September 13, 2024
By Agence France Presse
Pope Francis will meet with fifteen victims of clerical sexual abuse in Belgium during his planned visit to the country at the end of the month, the Belgian Bishops’ conference said Friday.
Francis has made combating sexual assault in the church one of the main missions of his papacy, and insisted on a “zero tolerance” policy in the wake of multiple wide-reaching scandals.
In March, the bishops’ conference revealed the pontiff had defrocked a disgraced Belgian bishop, Roger Vangheluwe, 87, who 14 years ago had admitted to years of child abuse.
Vangheluwe was not prosecuted due to statute of limitations, but thousands of victims came forward after he resigned in 2010.
The scandal resurfaced in autumn 2023 when a documentary was broadcast, denouncing the Church’s decades-long silence on sexual assaults by clergymen.
Some of the people who spoke in the documentary will meet the pope during the visit, a source close to the case indicated.
Francis’ visit, between September 26 and 29, will be the first by the head of the Catholic Church since 1995.
The place and date of the meeting with victims has not been specified.
The trip to Belgium comes less than a fortnight after the pontiff returns from an extensive trip to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore between September 2 and 13.
He is the first pope to visit Belgium since Jean-Paul II in 1995.