Complete speech by Pope Francis to the Belgian authorities

Below is the complete speech that Pope Francis addressed this morning to the Belgian authorities, after his private meeting with the Kings of the country:

I thank Your Majesty for the warm welcome and kind greeting you extended to me. I am very happy to visit Belgium. When you think of this country, you conjure up something small and big at the same time, a western and at the same time central country, as if it were the beating heart of a giant system.

Indeed, the proportions and order of greatness are deceptive. Belgium is not such an extensive state, but its peculiar history has meant that, immediately after the end of the Second World War, the European peoples, tired and weakened, beginning a serious path of pacification, collaboration and integration, saw Belgium as the headquarters. nature of the main European institutions. Due to the fact that it is the dividing line between the Germanic and Latin world, adjacent to France and Germany, countries that had most embodied the nationalist antitheses at the base of the conflict, Belgium appears as the ideal place, almost a synthesis of Europe, from which contribute to physical, moral and spiritual reconstruction.

You could say that Belgium is a bridge between the continent and the British Isles, between the Germanic and Francophone matrix area, between the south and the north of Europe. A bridge, to allow harmony to expand and controversies to dissipate. A bridge where each one, with their language, mentality and convictions, meets the other and chooses words, dialogue and exchange as means to relate. A place where you learn to make your own identity, not an idol or a barrier, but a welcoming space that is a point of departure and return, where valid exchanges are promoted, new balances are sought together and new syntheses are built. Belgium is a bridge that favors trade, that communicates and brings civilizations into dialogue. A bridge, therefore, essential to build peace and repudiate war.

In this way you understand how big little Belgium is. It is understood the need that Europe has for it to remind itself of its history, made up of peoples and cultures, of cathedrals and universities, of conquests of human ingenuity, but also of so many wars and a will to dominate that sometimes became in colonialism and exploitation.

Europe needs Belgium to carry forward the path of peace and fraternity between the peoples that make it up. This country reminds all the others that, when – based on the most varied and unsustainable excuses – borders and treaties begin to be disregarded, and the right to create law is left to arms, subverting what is in force, it is He uncovers Pandora’s box and all the winds begin to blow violently, beating against the house and threatening to destroy it. In this historical moment, I believe that Belgium has a very important role. We are close to an almost global war.

Indeed, concord and peace are not a conquest that is achieved once and for all, but rather a task and a mission that must be cultivated incessantly, treated with tenacity and patience. The human being, in fact, when he stops remembering the past, depriving himself of its teaching, has the disconcerting ability to fall again, even after having risen, forgetting the sufferings and the terrifying cost of past generations. Memory doesn’t work on this. It’s curious. There are other forces that in society or in people make us always fall into the same things.

In this sense, Belgium is more valuable than ever for the memory of the European continent. Memory that makes available irrefutable arguments for the development of constant and timely cultural, social and political action, both brave and prudent and that excludes a future in which the idea and practice of war, with its catastrophic consequences, become a viable option again.

The story, we know, teachers of lifeteacher of life, very often ignored, from Belgium calls on Europe to resume its path, to recover its true face, to trust again in the future by opening up to life, to hope, to overcome the demographic winter and the hell of the war. There are two calamities at this moment. The hell of war, we are seeing, which can transform into a world war. And the demographic winter. With this we must be practical. Make children, make children!

The Catholic Church wants to be a presence that, bearing witness to its faith in the risen Christ, offers individuals, families, societies and nations, an ancient and always new hope, a presence that helps everyone face the challenges challenges and trials, without volatile enthusiasms or gloomy pessimisms, but with the certainty that the human being, loved by God, has an eternal vocation of peace and good, and is not destined for dissolution or nothingness.

With her gaze fixed on Jesus, the Church always recognizes herself as a disciple, who with fear and trembling follows her Master, recognizing herself as holy as founded by Him and, at the same time, fragile, holy and sinful and insufficient in her members, always lacking and surpassed by the task that has been entrusted to it.

The Church announces News that can fill hearts with joy and, with works of charity and countless testimonies of love for others, seeks to provide concrete signs and proofs of the love that moves her.

She, however, lives in the concreteness of the cultures and mentalities of a certain era, which she contributes to shaping or which, in some way, sometimes subjects her; and does not always understand and live the evangelical message in its purity and fullness. The Church is sinful, it is holy and sinful.

In this permanent coexistence, holiness and sin, coexistence between lights and shadows, the Church lives, often with results of great generosity and splendid dedication, and sometimes, unfortunately, with the emergence of painful anti-testimonies. I think of the dramatic cases of abuse of minors, to which the Prime Minister and the King have referred, a scourge that the Church is facing with determination and firmness, listening to and accompanying injured people and implementing a broad prevention program in everyone. Brothers and sisters, this is the shame, the shame that today, all of us must take control, ask for forgiveness and solve the problem.

The shame of child abuse. We think of the time of the holy innocents, and we say Oh what a tragedy, what did King Herod do! But today, in the Church itself, there is this crime. The Church must be ashamed, ask for forgiveness and try to resolve this situation with Christian humility. And put all the possibilities so that this does not happen again. Someone tells me “but Holiness, think that according to statistics the vast majority of abuse occurs in families or in the neighborhood or in the world of sports and at school.” If there is just one, it is enough to be ashamed. In the Church we must ask for forgiveness for this, and for others to ask for forgiveness for their part. This is our shame and our humiliation.

In this regard, I was saddened by the phenomenon of “forced adoptions”, also present here in Belgium between the 50s and 70s of the last century. In those thorny stories the bitter fruit of a crime and an offense was mixed with what was unfortunately the result of a mentality widespread in all strata of society; to the point that those who acted according to that mentality, consciously thought that they were doing good, both for the child and for the mother.

Often families and other social entities, including the Church, thought that, to remove the negative stigma, which unfortunately in those times affected those who were single mothers, it would be better for both, mother and child, for the latter to be adopted. There were even cases in which some women were not given the opportunity to decide whether to keep the child or give it up for adoption. And this happens today in some cultures, in some countries.

As successor of the apostle Peter, I pray to the Lord that the Church always finds within itself the strength to act with clarity and not to align itself with the dominant culture, even when that culture uses – manipulating them – values ​​that derive from the Gospel, but only to extract of them illegitimate conclusions, with their consequent burdens of suffering and exclusion.

I pray that those responsible for nations, looking at Belgium and its history, know how to learn from this and, thus, spare their people incessant catastrophes and innumerable mourning. I pray that the rulers know how to assume their responsibility, the risk and the honor of peace, and know how to remove the danger, ignominy and absurdity of war. I pray that they fear the judgment of conscience, of history and of God, and convert their eyes and hearts, always putting the common good first. At this time, in which the economy has developed so much, I would like to emphasize that in some countries the investments that give the most benefits are the arms factory.

Your Majesty, ladies and gentlemen, the motto of my visit to your country is “On the way, with Esperance”. It makes me think about the fact that Hope is written with a capital letter, that suggests to me that hope is not something that you carry in your backpack along the way, no, hope is a gift from God that never disappoints and is carried in the heart. And so I want to leave this wish of hope to you and to all the men and women who live in Belgium: that you may always ask for and receive this gift of the Holy Spirit, to walk together with Hope on the path of life and history.