Despite suffering a mild flu Monday, Pope Francis still plans to travel later this week to Luxembourg and Belgium to visit a once-solid bastion of Roman Catholic culture that now has decreasing church attendance and increasing use of euthanasia.
Michele Dillon is a sociologist and the dean of the University of New Hampshire’s College of Liberal Arts. She is also the author of the book, Postsecular Catholicism: Relevance and Renewal. Dillon told VOA that while Pope Francis engages in interreligious dialogue in Asia, Europe and places like Belgium and Luxembourg remain very important to him and the Roman Catholic Church.
“Secularization has sort of really accelerated certainly in the last 20 years. Euthanasia legislation is a good example of that,” she said.
Both countries have legalized euthanasia, ending the life of a patient suffering a serious physical or mental illness.
“They have a lot of sex abuse issues there [meaning Belgium] at the highest level to the Church hierarchy. It’s his commitment to really go to where the people are. He is very clear-eyed about what the problems are, the problems within the Church, what the problems of society at large are.”
Veteran Vatican observers in Rome, like Francis X. Rocca, formerly of The Wall Street Journal, point out that Belgium was the second country to legalize euthanasia, after the neighboring Netherlands, in 2002.
Twelve years later, it legalized euthanasia for minors, with no minimum age specified. Rocca told VOA that Belgium, once historically staunchly Catholic, is seeing a drop in church attendance, while putting in place laws like euthanasia, against its teaching.
“After 22 years of legalization of euthanasia in Belgium, the practices increased steeply, and it’s become much more popular and that’s in direct contradiction with the teachings of the Catholic Church,” Rocca said. “So, there is a broader question of how welcome his message will be, his presence. There have been some complaints by people in the media there.
“But the question of euthanasia is probably the starkest one because the Church itself has had to figure out ways of ministering to people who have chosen euthanasia.”
Rocca added that there are people in the church who approve of euthanasia or think at least it can be justified. He said that includes at least one bishop, the bishop of Antwerp, Johan Bonny.
Rocca said that even some Catholic institutions in Belgium, including hospitals, have accommodated the use of euthanasia. But he questions whether the pope will address concerns over euthanasia explicitly or only allude to it.
“He’s condemned euthanasia as being part of what he calls a ‘throwaway’ culture,” Rocca said. “It’s a question whether he will speak about this when he goes on his trip because Francis doesn’t generally confront these controversial or cultural questions head on when he’s in a country.”
The University of New Hampshire’s Dillon said Francis is “not necessarily going to change things in Belgium and Luxembourg.”
“I think it’s important to what he would call evangelization — being with the people, whether they are first world or third world,” she said. “He wants to go to countries and show people that he wants to engage with them, talk with them about the challenges and the circumstances of their lives.”
Still, Rocca says the sight of 87-year-old Pope Francis in a wheelchair, defying his infirmities, while taking his mission to the world, speaks volumes about his commitment to life.
