Pope makes hope-inspired trip to ‘heart of Europe’ amid abuse scandal

After visiting Luxembourg, Pope Francis has arrived in Belgium for a four-day trip that will end in Bruxelles on Sunday, in his 46th Apostolic journey abroad.

The visit — celebrated with the slogan “On the Road, with Hope” — is the first one of a pontiff to the country since Pope John Paul II’s trip in 1985.

This time around, the atmosphere is much more sombre.

During the visit, Pope Francis is supposed to discuss three of his priorities: peace, migration, and climate. However, everyone seems to be focused on completely different matters.

Where is the pope going to stop over in Belgium?

The pope will be on the move starting Friday morning, when he’ll greet King Albert II of Belgium at the Laeken Castle, the official residence of the Belgian royals, just north of Brussels.

Later on, he’ll head to the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven) to celebrate the institution’s 600 anniversary.

Preparations are in full swing, the university’s spokesperson Emmanuel Rottey told Euronews, adding, however, that “life goes on as usual”.

“On Friday morning, there will still be the weekly market in the city centre, in the same locations where a couple of hours later the pope will greet the people,” Rottey said.

On Saturday, Pope Francis will pay a visit to Brussels’ Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, the sixth-largest church in the world, for a meeting with bishops, priests and nuns as well as refugees.

On Sunday, the pope will hold a mass in the King Baudouin Stadium in Brussels, where he will deliver the Angelus homily and beatify the 16th-century Carmelite nun Anne of Jesus.

Belgium church child abuse: What is the pope going to say?

Along with France, the UK, and Ireland, Belgium was hit by one of the worst church abuse scandals in recent history.

On Saturday, Francis will meet 15 survivors in an undisclosed location, who will reportedly hand him an open letter. The Belgian parliament during the last year has been investigating’ testimonies recalling stories of violence by predator priests.

Vatican spokesman Nicola Bruni acknowledged in a rare preview that Pope Francis will certainly address Belgium’s abuse record.

The pontiff’s reform effort has also been aimed at alleviating the plague of child abuse in the Church. The Belgian bishops said there should be zero tolerance and any clergyman attempting to cover up abuse stories should be defrocked.

The pontiff created a global digital platform for Catholics to report suspicions of abuse or cover-ups by bishops as well as instituted the Pontificia commissio pro tutela minorum, the first high-level papal commission to address clergy abuse.

But some activists say the measures are only good “on paper” and are not being implemented effectively.

Why are ultra-conservative Catholics angry at the pope?

The pope recently came back from a trip to four south-Asian countries – Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Singapore – where he spoke up about religious freedom in radically libertarian terms compared to his predecessors.

In Singapore, a country which hosts at least five different faiths, he said that “all religions are a path to God”.

“They are like different languages in order to arrive at God, but God is God for all”.

The statement was deemed by some as “unacceptable”.

“The pope’s talk here is misleading in a sense that people who aren’t Christian don’t need to convert in order to follow the path that God gave to the world”, said Fr Gerald Murray from the Archidiochesis of New York.

This is not the first time that the pope’s words on freedom of choice and diversity have caused a stir. His positions of tolerance towards the LGBTQ+ community were also badly received by some fringes within the Catholic Church who are hostile to Pope Francis’ reform attempts.

An attempt to revive Europe’s ‘fundamental values’?

In turn, the Vatican’s top clerics hope the visit to the country that most embodies European institutions will help revive the continent’s Christian roots.

In an interview published on Wednesday by Vatican News, The Holy See’s Secretary of State Pietro Parolin subtly accused the EU of taking the distance from his “Judeo-Christian tradition” since its foundation, thus “provoking a certain confusion” that doesn’t help the creation of a European identity.

“Europe greatly needs to rediscover its roots”, he said, “if it intends to be a voice that is heard and authoritative in today’s world”.

However, no official meeting between the pope and EU diplomats has been announced for this trip.