Pope vows to root out ‘scourge’ of sexual abuse after unusually frank plea from Belgian PM

Palace of Laeken, Belgium (CNN) — Pope Francis has pledged to root out the “scourge” of clerical sexual abuse after Belgium’s prime minster urged him in unusually frank terms to take concrete action.

Francis was addressing political leaders on Friday at the official residence of the King of Belgium, a country where devastating clerical abuse scandals have erupted in recent years.

Before he spoke, both the Belgian king and Prime Minister Alexander de Croo raised the issue in their speeches, the latter speaking directly to the pope, in remarks that underline how the abuse crisis has come to dominate Belgian national attention.

“You are committed to a fair and equitable approach. But the road is still long,” the prime minister told Francis. “If something goes wrong, we can’t accept cover-ups. It harms the precious work done by everyone. And that’s why words are not enough today. Concrete steps are needed. The victims must be heard. They must occupy a central place. They have the right to the truth.”

He added: “In order to look forward, the Church must clarify its past.”

In his remarks, Francis compared the church’s abuse crisis to the biblical story of King Herod’s order that all male children aged two and under be executed.

“This is the shame, the shame that we must all take in hand today and ask for forgiveness and solve the problem, the shame of abuse, of child abuse,” the pope said. “We think of the time of the ‘Holy Innocents’ and say ‘what a tragedy. What did King Herod do?’ But today, in the Church itself there is this crime.”

He said that “the Church must be ashamed and ask for forgiveness and try to resolve this situation with Christian humility and put all the possibilities in places so that this doesn’t happen again.”

The 87-year-old pontiff, who is on a three-day visit to Belgium after spending a day in Luxembourg, insisted that abuse is a “scourge that the church is firmly and decisively addressing by listening to and accompanying those who have been wounded, and by implementing a prevention program throughout the world.”

Appalling revelations of clerical sexual abuse have emerged in Belgium over the last 30 years including the case of a former bishop who abused two of his nephews. The scandal has loomed large over the pope’s trip, during which Francis was also expected to meet 15 abuse survivors.

Meanwhile, the Belgian church has also been caught up in a forced adoption scandal with an investigation by a Flemish newspaper indicating that Belgian nuns had been involved in an estimated 30,000 cases where newborns were taken from their mothers between 1945 and 1980. Most of the cases involved young, unmarried women whose parents wanted the pregnancies kept under wraps.

Francis also addressed this scandal in his remarks, saying: “I was saddened to learn about the practice of ‘forced adoptions’ that also took place here in Belgium between the 1950s and the 1970s. In those poignant stories, we see how the bitter fruit of wrongdoing and criminality was mixed in with what was unfortunately the prevailing view in all parts of society at that time.”

The pope said these cases occurred because the “family and other actors in society, including within the church” thought giving up children for adoption was a way to avoid the unfortunate stigma which fell on “unmarried mothers.”

He said the lesson from the adoption scandal is for the church “never [to] conform to the predominant culture” even if that culture superficially aligns with the church’s values. This, he said, can happen in a “manipulative way” and cause “suffering and exclusion.”

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to change the ages of children whom King Herod wanted to execute.

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