Pope Francis pressed ahead with a historic four-day apostolic journey across Belgium on Saturday, engaging in candid exchanges with royal, political, and academic leaders in Brussels, Leuven, and Louvain-la-Neuve while preparing to preside over a massive concluding open-air Mass at King Baudouin Stadium on Sunday.
Marking the first papal visit to Belgium in nearly three decades—since Pope John Paul II traveled to Brussels in 1995—the 87-year-old pontiff was welcomed with full state honors at the Castle of Laeken by King Philippe, Queen Mathilde, and Prime Minister Alexander De Croo. In an unusually direct protocol ceremony before civil authorities and the diplomatic corps, both the monarch and the prime minister urged the Catholic Church to take decisive action for victims of historical clerical sexual abuse and forced adoptions.
Candid Dialogue With Belgian Authorities and Confronting Historical Abuse
Responding off-the-cuff to his hosts' remarks, Francis described clerical abuse as a 'shame and humiliation' that the Church must confront with zero tolerance and concrete reparations. On Friday evening at the Apostolic Nunciature in Brussels, the pontiff held an emotional private meeting lasting more than two hours with seventeen Belgian survivors, listening personally to their testimonies and receiving their written appeals.
The centerpiece of the papal itinerary celebrates the upcoming 600th anniversary of the Catholic University of Louvain, founded in 1425 by papal bull of Pope Martin V and today divided into the Dutch-speaking KU Leuven and the French-speaking Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain). Speaking to professors in Leuven on Friday and thousands of students in Louvain-la-Neuve on Saturday afternoon, Francis called on universities to widen intellectual boundaries and resist both joyless technocracy and ecological indifference.
“Europe needs Brussels and Belgium to remain a bridge of peace, dialogue, and moral courage—where intellectual inquiry serves human dignity and protects our common planetary home.”
Six Centuries of Academic Inquiry at Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve
During Saturday morning's schedules in Brussels, Francis also visited elderly residents and rough sleepers at the parish of Saint Gilles, joined bishops and catechists inside the cavernous National Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Koekelberg, and paused silently in the royal crypt at Laeken before the tomb of the late King Baudouin, who reigned from 1951 to 1993.
Before boarding his return flight to Rome on Sunday afternoon, the pope will celebrate Mass before more than 37,000 worshippers at King Baudouin Stadium, where he is set to beatify Sister Ana de Jesús, a 16th-century Spanish Discalced Carmelite mystic and close collaborator of Saint Teresa of Ávila who founded convents in Brussels, Louvain, and Mons.
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