Who is King Baudouin, a king whom Pope Francis wants to beatify?
A 36-hour royal abdication
Here is a former Belgian king preparing to join Louis IX, Edward the Confessor and many other sovereigns already elevated to the glory of the altars. Pope Francis, finishing his visit to Belgium, announced that he wanted to move forward with a beatification process.
The fact most often cited to underline the ardor of his Catholic faith and its coherence between his convictions and his actions dates from the end of his long reign, in 1990. That year, he abdicated for 36 hours in order not to sign the law on the legalization of abortion carried by the government. An “absolutely brilliant trick allowing him to remain faithful to his convictions, made possible thanks to an article of the Belgian Constitution never used until then” as underlines the writer Patrick Roegiers, author of The spectacular story of the Belgian kings (Perrin, 2007).
What Francis recalled to the journalists present on the plane returning to Rome on Sunday in these terms: “The king was courageous because, faced with a murderous law, he did not sign and resigned.”
King Baudoin nicknamed the “sad king”
Discreet, almost self-effacing, the sovereign, at the start of his reign, was nicknamed the “sad king”. For several years, no one knew of him having a romantic affair, so a rumor circulated claiming that he wanted to enter the orders. Patrick Roegiers reports that he spent “a lot of time praying in prostration, on the ground, with his arms crossed, in his private chapel. A heated floor had even been installed so that he wouldn’t get cold.”
To the media Aleteia, Bernadette Chovelon, author of a work dedicated to them (1), reports that he and Queen Fabiola shared “the Eucharist together and that this daily Eucharist throughout their life as a couple was for them the “bread of the road ” “.
King Baudoin can “enlighten the rulers”
A man of prayer, it is perhaps even more through his courage in dramatic situations for his country and in the face of personal trials that he can “enlighten those in power”, in the words of Francis. Born in 1930, he lost his mother in a road accident at the age of four. In 1951, he ascended the throne “in tragic circumstances for Belgium when the country was divided over the attitude of his father, Leopold III during the war and the relations he then maintained with Nazi Germany. After his father’s abdication, when the country was on the verge of implosion, he saved the monarchy and, in a certain way, Belgium, of which the monarchy is the cement,” according to Patrick Roegiers.
There was also the personal ordeal as much as the political one, that of not being able to have a child. Queen Fabiola experiences five miscarriages. In a speech, King Baudouin dared to evoke this personal tear in these terms: “We have no children, and for a long time we wondered about the meaning of this suffering. But, little by little, we understood that by not having children of our own, our hearts were freer to love all children, absolutely all.”
A king loved by his people
Even today, Belgians who experienced Baudouin’s reign have fond memories of the man who embodied, especially in the 1950s, a happy and prosperous country to the point that Belgium identified with the king and vice versa.
During the funeral in 1993, Queen Fabiola made an impression by attending mass dressed in white, as a sign of her hope in the resurrection. “If he was a king according to the hearts of men, he was also a king according to the heart of God” summarizes Cardinal Godfried Danneels, primate of Belgium, in his homily.
- Baudouin and Fabiola, the spiritual journey of a couple, Bernadette Chovelon, Artège (2018).
With Aleteia and La Croix.