Roman Catholicism in Belgium
Encyclopedia
The Belgian Catholic Church, part of the global Roman Catholic Church
, is under the spiritual leadership of the Pope
, the curia in Rome
and the Conference of Belgian Bishops.
, located in the old Flemish city of Mechelen
(Malines in French). Since 2010, the archbishop of Mechelen and primate
of all Belgium is Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard.
The Belgian church established and sponsors the Catholic University of Leuven
, the largest university
in Belgium. It is considered one of the "World's Best Colleges and Universities" in the new 2009 US News and World Report. The archbishop of Mechelen is ex officio the Great Chancellor of the Catholic University of Leuven
. It was founded by the bishops of Belgium in 1834. Some of its most notable graduates include Georges Lemaitre
, priest, astronomer, and proposer of the Big Bang theory, Otto von Habsburg
, current head of the Habsburg family, Saint Alberto Hurtado, Chilean Jesuit priest who was canonized in 2005, Charles Jean de la Vallee-Poussin
, mathematician who proved the prime number theorem, Christian de Duve
, winner of the Nobel Prize
in Medicine in 1974, among others. The Belgian church also oversees the Basilica of the Sacred Heart
, the National Basilica
of Belgium.
, about three quarters of the total population. However, as elsewhere in Europe, secularization has hit hard in Belgium; Sunday church attendance has dropped well below 10% as per latest research such as from the "Centrum voor politicologie" of the Catholic University Leuven. Although sources are quoting different figures between 4 and 9 percent, a church attendance of 6 percent in 2009 seems to be the most likely figure. Sources are quoting a drop in attendance of 0,5 % yearly and in 1998 (the last year during which mass attendance was measured), attendance was just above 11 %. Early 2008, the Belgian Catholic Church has announced it will gather and publish adherence figures though the current usual Sunday attendance statistics does not seem to bother Cardinal Danneels, who said he was more concerned with the declining number of new priests.
As of 2010, there are about 1,900 priests in the archdiocese of Malines-Brussels, but most of them are either retired or on the verge of retirement. Only two were ordained in 2007.
In 2009, Cardinal Andre-Mutien Leonard was appointed Belgium's new primate, but only after the 450th anniversary celebration of the Mechelen-Brussels archdiocese and the canonization of Fr. Damien De Veuster of Molokai. Both events were led by Cardinal Godfried Danneels. Before his appointment, Leonard was Bishop of Namur.
The scandal came to a head when Roger Vangheluwe
, Bishop of Bruges
, resigned in April 2010 after admitting that he had sexually abused a boy in his "close entourage”. The boy was not named but was known to be Vangheluwe's nephew. The abusive acts remain undisclosed. No criminal charges have been brought against Vangheluwe, who has since retired to a Trappist monastery in Westvleteren, in Western Belgium, though he may be asked to leave after growing public pressure.
Vangheluwe's resignation followed the jailing of Robert Borremans, a popular Brussels priest who had officiated at the marriage of the prince and princess of Belgium. Borremans was arrested in 2006, and in January 2010 he was convicted of sexual abuse of two boys over a period of seven years. The boys were 6 and 11 years old when the abuse began in 1994, and the acts cited included touching, masturbation
and fellatio
. Borremans denied the criminal charges in one of the cases, stating that the acts were consensual and occurred when the victim was not a minor. He was found guilty based on the victims' testimony, supported by expert opinion.
Vangheluwe's resignation came at a time of increased media coverage of clerical sex abuse in Europe. After the resignation, the Catholic Church launched an investigating commission into clerical child abuse in Belgium, headed by the independent psychologist Peter Adriaenssens. The commission's work came to an abrupt end on 24 June 2010, when the Belgian police raided the offices of the Catholic Church in Belgium and sealed them. There were four raids in all, with thousands of documents seized. One of the raids involved drilling into the tombs of two cardinals. The Vatican was reported as being 'indignant' over the raids, saying they had led to the "violation of confidentiality of precisely those victims for whom the raids were carried out".
In July 2010 Belgian police stated that the raids were part of an investigation of death threats made against witnesses and magistrates.
Nonetheless, the Adriaenssens commission published a 200-page report on 10 September 2010. According to the report, the commission heard testimony from 488 complainants, concerning incidents that took place between 1950 and 1990. The report contained testimony from 124 people. Two-thirds of the complainants were men, now aged in their 50s and 60s.
), was sentenced to five years in prison for the rape of a 14-year-old girl. In a controversial move, Dupont was allowed to serve his time under ecclesiastical supervision in a monastery, while his two male accomplices served much longer terms in state prison. The trial took place in a courtroom closed to the public.
A few years later in 1996, Louis André, paris priest of the hamlet of Ottré in Luxembourg
, was arrested and accused the rape of two boys. He was set free eight months later. He was then ordered by Church authorities to leave his post and retire to a monastery, but he successfully resisted the order, supported by a group of his parishioners. Four years later, however, André was accused of several additional acts of sexual abuse and rape, dating to between 1964 and 1996, including the rape of several girls under 10 years old, one of whom was his own niece.
Although he denied any wrongdoing, he was convicted and served three years in prison before dying of cancer in 2003.
In 1997, another Belgian priest was arrested for raping a minor, and he subsequently confessed to having raped seven other victims between 1968 and 1997. This was Abbot André Vanderlyn (aka Vander Lyn or Vander Lijn), the priest of a working-class parish in Brussels.
In January 1998, Father Luc De Bruyne of the Congregation of the Fratres Van Dale in Torhout (near Bruges
) was arrested for sexual abuse of four mentally disabled boys. De Bruyne had worked as a guidance counselor in a "medico-pedagogic institute". He came to the attention of the institute in 1995, and was fired from his post. His religious order then sent him to Rwanda on the orders of the bishop of Bruges. In November 2005, De Bruyne and his colleague "brother Roger H." were sentenced to ten years in prison for abusing more than 20 mentally disabled people over 16 years. De Bruyne denied the allegations and appealed the verdict. At the time of the verdict he was no longer a member of the religious order, and he was married with two children.
Bart Aben of the Diocese of Ghent was arrested on 27 November 2009 for sexual abuse of two mentally disabled minors, which he admitted. He has since been released.
The editors of Roeach were Prof. Jef Bulckens of the Catholic University of Leuven and Prof. Frans Lefevre of the Seminary of Bruges. The name "Roeach" refers to the Hebrew word Ruach (Hebrew: רוח), meaning "spirit" or "breath".http://others.sensagent.com/roeach+hakodesj/nl-nl/
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
, is under the spiritual leadership of the Pope
Pope
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...
, the curia in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
and the Conference of Belgian Bishops.
Dioceses
There are eight dioceses, including one archdiocese, seat of the archiepiscopal residence and St. Rumbolds CathedralSt. Rumbolds Cathedral
St. Rumbold's Cathedral is the Belgian metropolitan archiepiscopal cathedral in Mechelen, dedicated to an assumedly Irish or Scottish Christian missionary and martyr who had founded an abbey nearby....
, located in the old Flemish city of Mechelen
Mechelen
Mechelen Footnote: Mechelen became known in English as 'Mechlin' from which the adjective 'Mechlinian' is derived...
(Malines in French). Since 2010, the archbishop of Mechelen and primate
Primate
A primate is a mammal of the order Primates , which contains prosimians and simians. Primates arose from ancestors that lived in the trees of tropical forests; many primate characteristics represent adaptations to life in this challenging three-dimensional environment...
of all Belgium is Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard.
The Belgian church established and sponsors the Catholic University of Leuven
Catholic University of Leuven
The Catholic University of Leuven, or of Louvain, was the largest, oldest and most prominent university in Belgium. The university was founded in 1425 as the University of Leuven by John IV, Duke of Brabant and approved by a Papal bull by Pope Martin V.During France's occupation of Belgium in the...
, the largest university
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
in Belgium. It is considered one of the "World's Best Colleges and Universities" in the new 2009 US News and World Report. The archbishop of Mechelen is ex officio the Great Chancellor of the Catholic University of Leuven
Catholic University of Leuven
The Catholic University of Leuven, or of Louvain, was the largest, oldest and most prominent university in Belgium. The university was founded in 1425 as the University of Leuven by John IV, Duke of Brabant and approved by a Papal bull by Pope Martin V.During France's occupation of Belgium in the...
. It was founded by the bishops of Belgium in 1834. Some of its most notable graduates include Georges Lemaitre
Georges Lemaître
Monsignor Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître was a Belgian priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain. He was the first person to propose the theory of the expansion of the Universe, widely misattributed to Edwin Hubble...
, priest, astronomer, and proposer of the Big Bang theory, Otto von Habsburg
Otto von Habsburg
Otto von Habsburg , also known by his royal name as Archduke Otto of Austria, was the last Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary from 1916 until the dissolution of the empire in 1918, a realm which comprised modern-day Austria, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia,...
, current head of the Habsburg family, Saint Alberto Hurtado, Chilean Jesuit priest who was canonized in 2005, Charles Jean de la Vallee-Poussin
Charles Jean de la Vallée-Poussin
Charles-Jean Étienne Gustave Nicolas de la Vallée Poussin was a Belgian mathematician. He is most well known for proving the Prime number theorem.The king of Belgium ennobled him with the title of baron.-Biography:...
, mathematician who proved the prime number theorem, Christian de Duve
Christian de Duve
Christian René, viscount de Duve is a Nobel Prize-winning cytologist and biochemist. De Duve was born in Thames Ditton, Surrey, Great Britain, as a son of Belgian refugees. They returned to Belgium in 1920...
, winner of the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
in Medicine in 1974, among others. The Belgian church also oversees the Basilica of the Sacred Heart
Basilica of the Sacred Heart
Basilica of the Sacred Heart may refer to one of several basilicas:-France:* Basilica of the Sacred Heart, or "Basilica of the Sacré Cœur" in Paris, France-United States:* Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Indiana, at Notre Dame, Indiana...
, the National Basilica
Basilica
The Latin word basilica , was originally used to describe a Roman public building, usually located in the forum of a Roman town. Public basilicas began to appear in Hellenistic cities in the 2nd century BC.The term was also applied to buildings used for religious purposes...
of Belgium.
Demographics
There are over seven million Catholics in BelgiumBelgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, about three quarters of the total population. However, as elsewhere in Europe, secularization has hit hard in Belgium; Sunday church attendance has dropped well below 10% as per latest research such as from the "Centrum voor politicologie" of the Catholic University Leuven. Although sources are quoting different figures between 4 and 9 percent, a church attendance of 6 percent in 2009 seems to be the most likely figure. Sources are quoting a drop in attendance of 0,5 % yearly and in 1998 (the last year during which mass attendance was measured), attendance was just above 11 %. Early 2008, the Belgian Catholic Church has announced it will gather and publish adherence figures though the current usual Sunday attendance statistics does not seem to bother Cardinal Danneels, who said he was more concerned with the declining number of new priests.
As of 2010, there are about 1,900 priests in the archdiocese of Malines-Brussels, but most of them are either retired or on the verge of retirement. Only two were ordained in 2007.
In 2009, Cardinal Andre-Mutien Leonard was appointed Belgium's new primate, but only after the 450th anniversary celebration of the Mechelen-Brussels archdiocese and the canonization of Fr. Damien De Veuster of Molokai. Both events were led by Cardinal Godfried Danneels. Before his appointment, Leonard was Bishop of Namur.
Pedophile priests scandal
Like several other countries since the mid-1990s, Belgium has been rocked by a clerical sex abuse scandal. Several priests have been found guilty of rape and sexual abuse of minors.The scandal came to a head when Roger Vangheluwe
Roger Vangheluwe
Roger Joseph Vangheluwe is the former Bishop of Bruges. He gained notoriety after admitting to having sexually abused two nephews over the course of a 15-year period while serving first as a priest and then as bishop, though the admission came after the statute of limitations for the crimes had...
, Bishop of Bruges
Bruges
Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located in the northwest of the country....
, resigned in April 2010 after admitting that he had sexually abused a boy in his "close entourage”. The boy was not named but was known to be Vangheluwe's nephew. The abusive acts remain undisclosed. No criminal charges have been brought against Vangheluwe, who has since retired to a Trappist monastery in Westvleteren, in Western Belgium, though he may be asked to leave after growing public pressure.
Vangheluwe's resignation followed the jailing of Robert Borremans, a popular Brussels priest who had officiated at the marriage of the prince and princess of Belgium. Borremans was arrested in 2006, and in January 2010 he was convicted of sexual abuse of two boys over a period of seven years. The boys were 6 and 11 years old when the abuse began in 1994, and the acts cited included touching, masturbation
Masturbation
Masturbation refers to sexual stimulation of a person's own genitals, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods. Masturbation is a common form of autoeroticism...
and fellatio
Fellatio
Fellatio is an act of oral stimulation of a male's penis by a sexual partner. It involves the stimulation of the penis by the use of the mouth, tongue, or throat. The person who performs fellatio can be referred to as the giving partner, and the other person is the receiving partner...
. Borremans denied the criminal charges in one of the cases, stating that the acts were consensual and occurred when the victim was not a minor. He was found guilty based on the victims' testimony, supported by expert opinion.
Vangheluwe's resignation came at a time of increased media coverage of clerical sex abuse in Europe. After the resignation, the Catholic Church launched an investigating commission into clerical child abuse in Belgium, headed by the independent psychologist Peter Adriaenssens. The commission's work came to an abrupt end on 24 June 2010, when the Belgian police raided the offices of the Catholic Church in Belgium and sealed them. There were four raids in all, with thousands of documents seized. One of the raids involved drilling into the tombs of two cardinals. The Vatican was reported as being 'indignant' over the raids, saying they had led to the "violation of confidentiality of precisely those victims for whom the raids were carried out".
In July 2010 Belgian police stated that the raids were part of an investigation of death threats made against witnesses and magistrates.
Nonetheless, the Adriaenssens commission published a 200-page report on 10 September 2010. According to the report, the commission heard testimony from 488 complainants, concerning incidents that took place between 1950 and 1990. The report contained testimony from 124 people. Two-thirds of the complainants were men, now aged in their 50s and 60s.
Other cases
The first signs of the scandal date back to 1992 when Louis Dupont, the parish priest of Kinkempois (near LiègeLiège
Liège is a major city and municipality of Belgium located in the province of Liège, of which it is the economic capital, in Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium....
), was sentenced to five years in prison for the rape of a 14-year-old girl. In a controversial move, Dupont was allowed to serve his time under ecclesiastical supervision in a monastery, while his two male accomplices served much longer terms in state prison. The trial took place in a courtroom closed to the public.
A few years later in 1996, Louis André, paris priest of the hamlet of Ottré in Luxembourg
Luxembourg
Luxembourg , officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. It has two principal regions: the Oesling in the North as part of the Ardennes massif, and the Gutland in the south...
, was arrested and accused the rape of two boys. He was set free eight months later. He was then ordered by Church authorities to leave his post and retire to a monastery, but he successfully resisted the order, supported by a group of his parishioners. Four years later, however, André was accused of several additional acts of sexual abuse and rape, dating to between 1964 and 1996, including the rape of several girls under 10 years old, one of whom was his own niece.
Although he denied any wrongdoing, he was convicted and served three years in prison before dying of cancer in 2003.
In 1997, another Belgian priest was arrested for raping a minor, and he subsequently confessed to having raped seven other victims between 1968 and 1997. This was Abbot André Vanderlyn (aka Vander Lyn or Vander Lijn), the priest of a working-class parish in Brussels.
In January 1998, Father Luc De Bruyne of the Congregation of the Fratres Van Dale in Torhout (near Bruges
Bruges
Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located in the northwest of the country....
) was arrested for sexual abuse of four mentally disabled boys. De Bruyne had worked as a guidance counselor in a "medico-pedagogic institute". He came to the attention of the institute in 1995, and was fired from his post. His religious order then sent him to Rwanda on the orders of the bishop of Bruges. In November 2005, De Bruyne and his colleague "brother Roger H." were sentenced to ten years in prison for abusing more than 20 mentally disabled people over 16 years. De Bruyne denied the allegations and appealed the verdict. At the time of the verdict he was no longer a member of the religious order, and he was married with two children.
Bart Aben of the Diocese of Ghent was arrested on 27 November 2009 for sexual abuse of two mentally disabled minors, which he admitted. He has since been released.
Suspect textbook
In 1998 it was reported that a catechism textbook for Belgian children called Roeach 3 showed comic-book-style pictures of toddlers asking sexual questions and engaging in sexual play. The Belgian Catholic hierarchy stated that the textbook was intended for adolescents, and that the pictures were meant to convey the idea that young children experience lust, a prevalent theory in contemporary psychology. Nevertheless the textbook was withdrawn after public protests by Catholics, which elicited media coverage as well as support from Church officials around the world.The editors of Roeach were Prof. Jef Bulckens of the Catholic University of Leuven and Prof. Frans Lefevre of the Seminary of Bruges. The name "Roeach" refers to the Hebrew word Ruach (Hebrew: רוח), meaning "spirit" or "breath".http://others.sensagent.com/roeach+hakodesj/nl-nl/