Thursday’s demonstration by Catholics for Choice, a US-based abortion rights group, comes days after the pontiff emphasised his traditional views of women while reiterating that abortion was “murder” and that doctors who terminate pregnancies were “hitmen”.
Those words, made during a visit to Belgium, were enough to prompt the prime minister, Alexander De Croo, to summon the Vatican’s ambassador, it emerged on Thursday.
Speaking to parliament, De Croo lambasted the remarks as “unacceptable”, adding he had invited the Holy See’s top diplomat in the country, the apostolic nuncio, “for discussions.”
“My message to the apostolic nuncio will be very clear: what happened there is unacceptable,” he said. “We do not need lessons on how our lawmakers democratically approve laws. The time when the church dictated the law in our country is fortunately long behind us,” he said.
The month-long, closed-door summit in the Vatican, known as a synod, is the final session of a debate on the future of the church and how to adapt it to the needs of Catholics today. But decisions on some of the most divisive topics, including women’s ordination and blessings for same-sex couples, have been postponed until next year, while abortion was never on the agenda.
Official Catholic church teaching condemns abortion in all circumstances, even if there is a risk to the mother’s life.
But data from the Pew Research Centre earlier this year showed that the majority of Catholics in the United States, which has the fourth-largest Catholic population in the world, believed it should be legal in all or most cases.
“One of the reasons we’re so focused on it in the US is because 98% of Catholic women have used birth control other than natural family planning and one in four abortion patients is Catholic,” said Ashley Wilson, a senior adviser for Catholics for Choice.
“But the issue of abortion, and contraception, does not get the same amount of attention as other church justice issues, even though it affects possibly far more people. For [the Church hierarchy] to say that ‘we need to be tough on abortion’ feels really out of touch. We cannot pass up this opportunity to have our voices heard.”
Catholics for Choice gathered 180 testimonies from Catholic women who had terminated a pregnancy, of which 51 were published in a book presented to the synod’s office on Thursday but which was ultimately rejected.
Many of the women came forward with their abortion stories after the US supreme court overturned its landmark Roe v Wade decision in 2022, ending a constitutional right to abortion that had been in place for 50 years.
The reasons behind their decisions were varied. Some chose to end their pregnancies due to health concerns or foetal abnormalities, while others were unplanned or the women did not feel ready to start a family. One woman told how, in her 20s, she fell pregnant while in an abusive relationship and didn’t want to be forced to marry the man.
“The stories are heartbreaking, inspiring, empowering and everything in between,” said Wilson. “Catholics for Choice was actually founded when Roe v Wade became law, and when it was overturned many people realised that they needed to come forward.”
Pope Francis sparked criticism in September after urging US Catholics to choose the “lesser evil” in the upcoming presidential election. Without mentioning the names of the two candidates, he said both were “against life”, seemingly referring to Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Kamala Harris’s stance on abortion.
“A lot of people forget that Pope Francis is a head of state too and shouldn’t be commenting on elections,” added Wilson. “If Emmanuel Macron had made those comments people would have freaked out.”
While in Belgium, Francis was also widely criticised for his views on the role of women in society.
“It is a huge thing, but he doesn’t seem to fully realise the ripple effects of his words and the violence they can cause to people,” said Wilson. “There are women in the US who are dying of sepsis because they can’t get the abortion care they need. And the most powerful lobby behind abortion bans in any country is the Catholic church. It’s both shocking and outrageous.”