Pope Francis heads to Belgium to meet migrants, victims of abuse

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis is pressing ahead with a four-day visit to Luxembourg and Belgium despite coming down with a mild flu, in a trip expected to highlight the needs of migrants and to feature a meeting with survivors of abuse by Catholic clergy.

The Vatican said the 87-year-old pope planned to make the trip, which starts on Thursday, after cancelling some meetings on Monday because of flu-like symptoms.

The Sept. 26-29 tour is a rare European visit for Francis, who prefers going to places never visited by a pope, or where Catholics are a small minority. It comes less than two weeks after the pontiff returned from a demanding 12-day, four-country tour across Southeast Asia and Oceania.

Belgium, like many countries, has uncovered cases of clerical sexual abuse. In March, the pope expelled from the priesthood a former Belgian bishop who admitted to sexually abusing two nephews. More than 700 complaints and reports of abuse involving the Church have been made in Belgium since 2012,

according to a report.

Belgium's ambassador to the Vatican, Patrick Renault, said Francis was expected to meet a group of 15 abuse survivors there privately.

The main reason for the pope's tour is to celebrate the 600th anniversary of two Belgian Catholic universities.

Luc Sels, rector of KU Leuven, one of the universities, said the pope's event at his college will focus largely on the needs of migrants and refugees. Francis will hear testimonies from some of about 160 refugees attending the university, and later have private, one-on-one meetings, he said.

It will be "intimate moment where the pope can exchange views with people from all over the world", said Sels.

DECLINING ATTENDANCE

Europe has been facing unprecedented migration levels over the past decade. The European Council on Refugees and Exiles, an NGO, said in May that Belgium is undergoing a "severe reception crisis" in processing refugee claims, with the country offering temporary protection to some 60,000 individuals in 2023.

Francis will visit Luxembourg on Thursday before heading to Brussels, the Belgian capital, that evening. The pope, who has suffered bouts of ill health but was in good form during the Asia and Oceania trip, returns to Rome on Sunday afternoon.

Traditionally a Catholic country, Belgium has seen a significant decline in church attendance in recent decades. Although the Vatican says about 72% of the 11.6 million population is Catholic, a 2018 Pew study found only about 11% of Belgians attended religious services at least monthly.

Luxembourg, a small landlocked country, counts about 271,000 Catholics among its 654,000 population, the Vatican says.

Geert De Cubber, a Catholic deacon in Ghent, compared Francis' visit to his earlier visit to Indonesia, where Christians are a small minority of the population.

"We should be humbled because what we see in his visits (is) … he mainly goes to the periphery," said De Cubber. "Belgium was once maybe … one of the centres of the Catholic Church in Europe, but today it's the periphery."

(This story has been refiled to update the headline)

(Reporting by Joshua McElwee; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)