Taken from mother by nuns, victim finds solace in pope Belgium visit

Pope Francis (C) meets residents during a visit at the Home Saint-Joseph, a residence for elderly in economic difficulty helped by the Little Sisters of Charity, in Brussels, on September 27, 2024, during his visit to Belgium. [AFP]

Pope Francis on Friday said he was "saddened" to learn about a little-known scandal that still troubles Belgium: the "forced adoption" of newborns taken from their mothers, with the complicity of nuns.

To Lieve Soens, who was listening in the audience, the pontiff's words meant a great deal.

The 50-year-old has been on a decades-long quest to find closure after she was torn from her mother at birth.

"I am very satisfied, it is a great start," she told AFP while travelling home from the royal residence in Brussels where Francis addressed political and civil society leaders as part of a three-day visit.

"We are being recognised as victims and that is very important".

Soens was adopted by a Belgian couple in 1974, shortly after her birth in northern France to a woman who opted to remain anonymous under a system known as delivering "under X".

Fifty years later, she is still trying to understand how her biological mother -- a teenager at the time -- was taken by nuns from Lommel in Belgium to Dunkirk, more than 200 kilometres (120 miles) away, to deliver a baby she would never see again.

A first step was to try to track down her birth mother. With the help of a victim support group, she located her in Belgium's Dutch-speaking Flanders, where she herself lives.

But her offer to meet was turned down, in a letter sent via a lawyer.

"Maybe she is afraid," Soens told AFP in an interview at her home in the Flemish town of Kuurne earlier this week.

"After the birth, she was told the baby was dead, and she likely never told her new family about this pregnancy at the age of 16 -- it's just too hard," she said.

Church 'apology' 

In 2023, the Flemish newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws published the hard-hitting testimony of multiple victims of forced adoption, including a mother whose newborn had been taken from her.

The paper's investigation estimated that Belgian nuns had been involved in around 30,000 such cases between 1945 and the 1980s.

Most of the births were in Belgium, but 3,000 to 4,000 pregnant women were taken to France, according to Binnenlands Geadopteerd, a support group for the victims of forced adoptions.

There, the "under X" system erases all filial link between mother and child.

Most cases involved young, unmarried women -- some of them victims of rape or incest -- whose parents wanted their pregnancy kept under wraps.

The parents would contact Church officials, who provided the link to families wishing to adopt.

"We see how the bitter fruit of wrongdoing and criminality was mixed in with what was unfortunately the prevailing view in all parts of society at that time," Pope Francis said in Brussels.

The Belgian conference of bishops has formally apologised on several occasions over the scandal -- when it first erupted in 2015 and again last year.

It has said it would welcome an outside investigation to ensure full accountability, but none has so far taken place.

In her search for her roots, Soens had the support of her adoptive parents.

They were convinced, she says, that they were doing the right thing by taking in an unwanted baby.

They showed her documents from 1974 including her birth certificate mentioning her adoption and change of name, and a bill from the private clinic where she was born.

'Every day counts' 

After they passed away some 20 years ago, she ramped up her efforts.

"I don't want to hurt anyone, I just want the truth," she said, while acknowledging her "anger towards the Church, the nuns and the clinic" who all played a role.

On Friday Soens was among the guests for the pope's speech at Laeken palace, where he also reaffirmed that the Catholic Church must "seek forgiveness" for the scourge of child sexual abuse.

At one point she and two fellow "adoptees" had hopes of an audience with the pope, but Church authorities chose to focus on bringing Francis face to face with a group of about 15 individuals who suffered clerical sex abuse as minors.

A poor decision in the view of Debby Mattys, who co-founded the Binnenlands Geadopteerd group and is pressing for access to clerical archives.

"The Church can help us find solutions to bring birth parents together with the children who were taken from them," said the 57-year-old -- herself a victim of forced adoption in the 1960s.

"It is truly urgent, because our parents are already getting old. Every day counts."