More than 500 Belgians are asking to be removed from the baptismal registry after Pope Francis’ recent trip to Luxembourg and Belgium, in which he harshly rebuked efforts to decriminalize voluntary abortion and referred to doctors who perform the procedure as “contract killers.”
According to a declaration published in Brussels on Wednesday and reported by the Catholic News Agency, 524 people signed on to express their desire to be no longer baptized Catholics.
“In their open letter addressed to the apostolic nuncio in Brussels, Franco Coppola; Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels Luc Terlinden, the primate of the Catholic Church in Belgium; and the seven Catholic dioceses in the country, the signers condemned certain comments made by the pope and called for themselves to be removed from the baptismal registry,” CNA reported.
Pope Francis held an informal press conference with reporters on his plane in September while traveling to Rome from Belgium.
“Women have a right to life, to their lives, and to the lives of their children,” Pope Francis explained. “Let us not forget to say that. Abortion is a homicide. … It kills a human being. The doctors who carry it out are contract killers. … And there is no debate about that.”
The pope’s comments didn’t just touch a nerve among the Belgian people. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo also went after the Pontiff for his “unacceptable” remarks.
“It is absolutely unacceptable for a foreign head of state to make such statements about democratic decision-making in our country,” De Croo said earlier this month.
De Croo added that Belgium “does not need lessons on how our parliamentarians pass laws democratically … Fortunately, the time when the Church dictated the laws in our country is long gone.”
As Breitbart reported earlier this month, “The pope’s comments touched a nerve with Belgium’s head of state due in large part to a controversial law currently being debated in the Belgian Parliament, which would extend the time limit for when a woman could get an abortion from 12 weeks to 18 weeks.”
CNA reports, “…since the 1950s, Belgium has seen a significant decline in the number of its practicing Christians. A European Commission poll in 2021 found that 44% of the country, which has a population of more than 11.5 million, identifies as Catholic, down from 72% of the population in 1981.
“A 2023 study by the Catholic university KU Leuven estimates the number of Catholics in Belgium to be slightly higher, at 50% of the population, but with just 9% attending Mass at least once a month.”
The collapse of Christianity in Belgium has led to an explosion in the number of abortions in the European country.
“Belgium has a population of less than 12 million people,e and at least 16,000 children are killed in the womb every year, according to official figures,” CNA reports. “A peak was reached in 2011 with almost 20,000 deaths by abortion.”
