Only days after he returned triumphant from a tour in the Asia-Pacific region where adoring crowds walked the jungle for days to see him, Pope Francis visited the European faithful in Belgium. The reception was more fraught.
Before he even arrived in Belgium on Thursday, sexual abuse survivors criticized him for scheduling little time to see them.
On Friday, the country’s prime minister told the pope that the church had “severely damaged” the public’s trust after sexual abuse accusations and cover-ups.
On Saturday, a Catholic university where Francis held a meeting “deplored” the pope’s “conservative positions on the role of women in society.”
And on Sunday, the pope said doctors who helped women have an abortion were “hit men,” causing outrage, including from Italian doctors who pointed out that abortion is legal in Italy within the first 90 days of pregnancy.
The Vatican did not respond to a request for comment on how the trip went, but on the plane returning to the Vatican after the trip, the pope objected to the criticism he received, saying the Catholic University of Louvain released its statement as he spoke. “It was pre-written,” he said, “and this is not moral.”
Experts said the trip reflected the reality of a changing church.
While the numbers of men joining the priesthood are growing in Africa and Asia, they have dwindled in Europe. Church attendance has dropped in Europe across the continent — in Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland and Italy. And throughout European societies, the church faces thorny questions on gender, gay marriage, abortion and sexual abuse that dominate public debate.
Francis “is convinced that down there, the church is coming to life,” said Alberto Melloni, a church historian, referring to Asia and Africa, “and that down here, the church is dying,” referring to Europe.
“What happened this weekend just confirms this for him,” said Mr. Melloni, who is the director of the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Sciences in Bologna, Italy.
Disaffection in Europe with the Roman Catholic Church began decades ago as societies became more secular, but it has been accelerated in several countries by sexual abuse scandals and cover-ups.
In Belgium, the church has long been grappling with the case of Roger Vangheluwe, who was bishop of Bruges in 2010, when he admitted having sexually abused his nephew for over a decade. The bishop was allowed to resign without punishment.
Since then, victims have come forward with hundreds of other cases and cover-ups involving other clerics.
The Vatican said it was aware that the question of sex abuse would come up during Francis’ trip.
“He walked into the lions’ den,” said Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit priest and church commentator. “The fact that he came out alive is a miracle.”
King Philippe of Belgium raised the issue of sex abuse and cover-ups on his first meeting with Francis, saying that it took “too long” for the problem to be addressed. Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said in his remarks to the pope: “To be able to look into the future, the church needs to come clean on its past.” The pope responded with a forceful condemnation of the abuse, calling it “our shame and our humiliation.”
On Saturday, at the university, the pope described women as having “a fertile welcome” and “care,” prompting the condemnation from the school for what university officials called a “deterministic and reductive” view. Others have also criticized how the pope had previously described the role of women in the church.
Although Francis has taken steps to allow women a broader role, he has made it clear that ordaining women as priests is not on the table.
The lack of women’s inclusion and meaningful leadership in the church is a driving factor for both men and women to leave Catholicism, said Kate McElwee, the executive director of the Women’s Ordination Conference, a group that promotes gender equity in the church.
“There’s only so many times the door can be closed in your face before you turn around and walk in a different direction,” Ms. McElwee said.
Father Reese, the church analyst, compared the pope to “a grandfather at a Thanksgiving dinner.”
“The grandkids love him,” he said, “but every once in a while he’ll say something that just drives them crazy.”
He added, “I’m afraid that some of the grandkids get up and stomp out and never talk to them again.”
During the Asia-Pacific trip, country leaders and the authorities Francis met largely ignored issues of sex abuse in the church or women’s roles, but focused instead on climate change or interfaith dialogue, fields in which Francis has been an acclaimed and much more uncontroversial leader.
In East Timor, a small and largely Catholic Asian island nation that Francis visited as part of the trip, one of the heroes of the independence cause, Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, has been accused of sexually abusing children decades ago. During the visit, the faithful said they refused to believe that he had committed any crime.
Francis “is much more at ease in the peripheries such as Asia and Africa, where they don’t ask these questions,” said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology at Villanova University, in Pennsylvania, using the term Francis employs to describe faraway, poorer or marginalized Catholics.
Rather than being preoccupied with energizing the Western faithful, Francis has appeared resigned to the fact that Europe is no longer the beating heart of the church, and has shifted his focus to the faith’s future in African or Asian countries.
He has never visited Germany as pope, for instance, but he has been to about a dozen Asian countries.
Experts said the Belgium trip, and especially the controversy at the University of Louvain, gave Francis another reason to turn his attention somewhere other than Europe.
“It was a disaster,” Mr. Melloni said.
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