During the solemn mass celebrated this Sunday at the King Baudouin stadium, in Brussels, in the presence of more than 30 thousand people, Pope Francis demanded that the bishops “not cover up abuse” and “that abusers be brought to justice”. “I ask you all: do not cover up abuse! I ask the bishops: do not cover up abuse! Condemn the abusers and help them to heal from this disease of abuse”, he said, in a ceremony that marked the end of a visit to Belgium.
Stating that, in the meeting he had with abused people in Brussels, he felt “the suffering”, Francisco underlined that in the Church “there is no place for abuse, nor for covering up abuse”, receiving applause from the faithful. “We think about what happens when the little ones are injured, mistreated by those who should care for them, the wounds of pain and helplessness, first of all on the part of the victims, but also on the part of their families and the community”, added the Pope.
And he continued: “With my mind and my heart, I return to the stories of some of these little ones that I met the day before yesterday [sexta-feira]. I listened to them, I felt their suffering as the abused and I repeat it here: in the Church there is a place for everyone, for everyone, but everyone will be judged and there is no place for abuse, there is no place to cover up abuse.”
In this harsh speech in Belgium, a country that is still reeling from hundreds of cases of minors being abused by members of the Church, Francis stated that “evil cannot be hidden”, but must first “be brought to light, it must be known , as some abusers did, and with courage.” “And may the abuser be judged, whether he is a layman, a laywoman, a priest or a bishop: may he be judged”, added the Pope, who received 17 Belgian victims at the nunciature.
At dawn, with Belgian and Vatican flags, around 35 thousand faithful took their seats at the King Balduíno stadium, where the Argentine Pope arrived shortly before 9:45 am (8:45 am in Portugal). The 87-year-old pontiff took a tour of the stadium in his “Popemobile”, applauded by the faithful who joined in the screams to the sound of the resounding organ music.
During his three-day visit, the first by a Pope to Belgium since John Paul II in 1995, Francis was asked about the crisis of sexual violence against minors, the welcome given to LGBT+ people and the place of women in the Church, topics that highlighted the high expectations of Belgian Catholics in relation to a doctrine that some consider too old-fashioned.
On Saturday, her response about the place of women provoked some disappointment and misunderstanding within the French-speaking Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve (UCL), one of the most famous Catholic universities in Europe, which, in a press release, criticized the “reductive position” of the opinions that the Pope reiterated on women and abortion.
Today’s homily was celebrated at the stadium named after King Baldwin, who Francis praised for having abdicated for a day in 1990, instead of giving his approval to a bill approved by parliament that legalized abortion. Francis’s unscheduled visit to pray at the king’s tomb and the declaration that the legislation was “homicidal” were some of the several gestures that, in a country that was once strongly Catholic, unnerved its secularized young people, many of whom turned away from the faith.
Even so, the stadium – which had a capacity of 37 thousand people for the mass – was almost full for the homily and the crowd cheered when Francisco arrived in his “Popemobile” and stopped to kiss the babies that were handed to him.
