Catholic Church in Belgium

There are eight dioceses, including one archdiocese, seat of the archiepiscopal residence and St. Rumbolds Cathedral, located in the Flemish city of Mechelen (Malines in French).

In 2009, Cardinal André-Mutien Léonard was appointed new Archbishop of Mechelen–Brussels and thus Belgium's new primate, but only after the 450th anniversary celebration of the Mechelen–Brussels archdiocese and the canonisation of Fr.

Some of its most notable graduates include Georges Lemaître, priest, astronomer, and proposer of the Big Bang theory, Otto von Habsburg, former head of the Habsburg family, Saint Alberto Hurtado, Chilean Jesuit priest who was canonised in 2005, Charles Jean de la Vallée-Poussin, mathematician who proved the prime number theorem, Christian de Duve, winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1974, among others.

Early 2008, the Belgian Catholic Church announced it would gather and publish adherence figures though the current usual Sunday attendance statistics did not seem to bother Cardinal Godfried Danneels (1933-2019), who said he was more concerned with the declining number of new priests.

[14][15] In 1992, Louis Dupont, the parish priest of Kinkempois, in Liège, was sentenced to five years in prison for the statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl.

[21][22] In 1997, a Belgian priest in Brussels, André Vanderlyn, was arrested for raping a minor, and he subsequently confessed to having intercourse with seven other people between 1968 and 1997.

[23] In January 1998, Luc De Bruyne of the "Broeders van Dale" in Torhout was arrested for sexual abuse of four mentally disabled boys, while as a guidance counsellor in a "medico-pedagogic institute".

The Belgian Catholic hierarchy stated that the textbook was intended for adolescents, and that the pictures were meant to convey the idea that young children experience lust, a prevalent theory in contemporary psychology.

Nevertheless, the textbook was withdrawn after public protests by Catholics, which elicited media coverage as well as support from Church officials around the world.

[28][29][30] On 27 November 2009, Bart Aben of the Diocese of Ghent was arrested for and admitted sexual conduct with two mentally disabled minors.

[31][32] In April 2010, Roger Vangheluwe, Bishop of Bruges, resigned after allegedly admitting that he had sexually abused an unnamed boy in his "close entourage".

[33][34][35] After the resignation of Vangheluwe, the Catholic Church launched an investigating commission into allegations of clerical child abuse in Belgium, headed by the independent psychologist Peter Adriaenssens.

The commission's work came to an abrupt end on 24 June 2010, when the Belgian police raided the offices of the Catholic Church in Belgium and sealed them.