Catholic Belgian university ‘deplores’ comments by Pope Francis moments after speech
Professors and students at UCLouvain, where the 87-year-old pontiff had made a speech on Saturday afternoon, said they wanted to express their “incomprehension and disapproval” about the pope’s views.
“UCLouvain deplores the conservative positions expressed by Pope Francis on the role of women in society,” said the statement, in extraordinary language from a Catholic university about a pope.
Francis went to the university on Saturday to celebrate its upcoming 600th anniversary as part of a weekend trip he is making to Belgium.
The university statement called the pope’s position on women’s roles in society “deterministic and reductive”.
“We are really shocked,” said Valentine Hendrix, a 22-year-old student. “He reduces us to a role of childbearer, mother, wife, everything we want to emancipate ourselves from.”
Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a climatologist at UCLouvain university, said Francis had “failed to rise to the occasion.”
“To reply that the Church is a woman is really missing the point of the question – about the Church’s respect for women and their role in the institution and in society,” he said.
Earlier the pope visited the tomb of Belgium’s King Baudouin who in 1990 famously refused to sign a law lifting penalties against abortion, citing personal convictions.
Francis described the legislation – passed after the king temporarily renounced his functions to avoid having to endorse it – as “a murderous law”.
Francis has faced criticism during events throughout his trip to Belgium. The country’s king and prime minister called on the pope to take more concrete actions to help survivors of abuse by Catholic clergy, and a rector at a different Catholic university asked him to reconsider the Catholic church’s ban on ordaining women as priests.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/s...ter-speech
Professors and students at UCLouvain, where the 87-year-old pontiff had made a speech on Saturday afternoon, said they wanted to express their “incomprehension and disapproval” about the pope’s views.
“UCLouvain deplores the conservative positions expressed by Pope Francis on the role of women in society,” said the statement, in extraordinary language from a Catholic university about a pope.
Francis went to the university on Saturday to celebrate its upcoming 600th anniversary as part of a weekend trip he is making to Belgium.
The university statement called the pope’s position on women’s roles in society “deterministic and reductive”.
“We are really shocked,” said Valentine Hendrix, a 22-year-old student. “He reduces us to a role of childbearer, mother, wife, everything we want to emancipate ourselves from.”
Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a climatologist at UCLouvain university, said Francis had “failed to rise to the occasion.”
“To reply that the Church is a woman is really missing the point of the question – about the Church’s respect for women and their role in the institution and in society,” he said.
Earlier the pope visited the tomb of Belgium’s King Baudouin who in 1990 famously refused to sign a law lifting penalties against abortion, citing personal convictions.
Francis described the legislation – passed after the king temporarily renounced his functions to avoid having to endorse it – as “a murderous law”.
Francis has faced criticism during events throughout his trip to Belgium. The country’s king and prime minister called on the pope to take more concrete actions to help survivors of abuse by Catholic clergy, and a rector at a different Catholic university asked him to reconsider the Catholic church’s ban on ordaining women as priests.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/s...ter-speech
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
