Little brings more heavenly bliss to the faithful or otherworldly wonder to casual visitors than ethereal hymns cascading amid the columns of Catholic cathedrals. That is, unless the composer is a known molester or someone accused of sexual abuse.
Just a few days before the highlight of Pope Francis’ visit to Belgium, a Mass at the most important stadium in Brussels, the specially chosen choir was rehearsing a brand-new closing hymn when it became known that the composer was a priest accused of molesting young women.
The hymn was swiftly faraway from the order of service and replaced with one other composition nevertheless it was too late to reprint the official Magnificat booklet for the mass due to variety of copies required. The name of the alleged abuser, who died two weeks ago, is true there at the underside of page 52, next to a request for donations, with checking account number, QR code and all.
It was the newest controversy within the Belgian church’s decades-long struggle to return to terms with an appalling history of sex abuse and cover-ups by its priests and clergy — a legacy Francis will confront in person when he meets with survivors during his visit.
“I pointed it out to them,” said the Rev. Rik Deville, a retired priest who has been a torchbearer for survivors of church abuse for 3 a long time. “What happened with the hymn is just a symptom of a much wider problem. They still cannot cope with the problem,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press.
For over 20 years, Belgium has been facing a continuing cascade of abuse reports that officially total several hundred known cases but which, advocates say, are only the tip of the iceberg: Many of the victims and perpetrators have died, or the alleged crimes have exceeded their statute of limitations.
Deville said victims in villages come head to head with such issues on a weekly basis. The Sunday Mass scandal only began to roll early this week when an abuse victim identified to a neighborhood bishop that he had warmly eulogized the recently deceased priest-composer who had, in truth, been an abuser.
As a result, the Bishop of Limburg, Patrick Hoogmartens, announced he wouldn’t participate in celebratory papal events. It set off the chain of events resulting in the change within the Mass program.
“It is just now since it is a global event that something is finished about it,” said Deville. “But such things occur on a weekly basis in parishes across the nation that victims are confronted like that. And then nothing is finished about it.”
Church authorities said the hymns were chosen in coordination with the musicians who were unaware of the case, which only got here to public attention after the recent death of the priest. Hundreds of churches across Belgium still have hymnbooks together with his works.
Debates over what to do with art, be it music or paintings when the artist has engaged in problematic and even criminal behavior, have confronted the church and society at large for hundreds of years, long before “cancel culture” became a buzzword.
Few people argue that Caravaggio’s religious masterpieces needs to be destroyed or taken down due to his criminal life: The man he killed is dead, as is he.
But in Los Angeles 4 years ago, the archdiocese banned the music of Catholic composer David Haas amid an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, allegations Haas strenuously denied.
And more recently, the mosaics of one among the Catholic Church’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, the Rev. Marko Rupnik, have come under scrutiny.
Rupnik’s Jesuit religious order expelled him in 2023 after greater than two dozen women accused him of spiritual, psychological and sexual abuses, some while he was creating the artwork. Francis reopened a church investigation, amid suspicions that Rupnik had escaped punishment in Francis’ Jesuit-friendly Vatican.
Rupnik hasn’t responded publicly to the allegations, but his art studio has defended him and denounced what it has called a media “lynching”.
The issue about what to do together with his artwork will not be minor, since Rupnik’s mosaics decorate the facades and altars of a few of the most-visited basilicas and churches around the globe, including at Lourdes, France; Fatima, Portugal and even within the Vatican’s apostolic palace.
So far, the bishop of Lourdes decided to maintain the Rupnik mosaics — for now — because there was no consensus inside a committee of experts he formed about what to do with them. The Knights of Columbus religious fraternity decided this summer to cover the mosaics at its shrine in Washington D.C., and chapel in Connecticut.
But earlier this yr, the pinnacle of the Vatican’s communications department created an uproar when he defended the continued use of images of Rupnik’s mosaics on the Vatican’s own news portal, Vatican News, whilst a canonical investigation is underway on the Vatican’s sex crimes office.
He argued, as have others, that one must separate the art from the artist.
That argument didn’t sit well with the pope’s top adviser on child protection and fighting clergy abuse, Cardinal Sean O’Malley. He penned a letter to the heads of all Vatican offices in June urging them to refrain from displaying Rupnik’s artwork as a gesture to abuse victims.
“Pastoral prudence would prevent displaying artwork in a way that would imply either exoneration or a subtle defense,” he wrote in June. “We must avoid sending a message that the Holy See is oblivious to the psychological distress that so many are suffering.”
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