During his recent trip to Belgium at the end of September, Pope Francis announced plans to start a beatification for the country’s late King Baudouin, a devout Catholic who once resigned the throne for a day rather than sign a law legalising abortion.
“Upon my return to Rome, I will start the beatification process of King Baudouin,” Francis wrote on X on Sept 29. “May his example as a man of faith illuminate all leaders.”
Unusually, however, the prospect of a sainthood cause for the late monarch has drawn doubts from a senior churchman and one who is not even from Belgium.
Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo has raised a red flag about a “hasty beatification” because there are still questions about Baudouin’s role in the assassination of independent Congo’s first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, in 1961.