Taken from mother by nuns, victim seeks answers as pope visits Belgium

The stain of Catholic child abuse looms over Pope Francis's visit to Belgium this week, but a lesser-known scandal still roils the country: the "forced adoption" of newborns taken from their mothers, with nuns' complicity.

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

Now 50, 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 kilometers (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 from 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.

"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 1980.

Most of the births were in Belgium, but 3,000 to 4,000 pregnant women were taken to France.

There, the "under X" system erases all filial link between mother and child, said Binnenlands Geadopteerd, a support group for the victims of forced adoptions.

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 make contact with Church officials, who provided the link to families wishing to adopt.

The Belgian conference of bishops has formally apologized 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 decades-long quest to find 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.

Soens is among the guests expected on Friday at Laeken palace, the royal residence where Francis is to deliver a speech to the Belgian nation.

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 individuals who had suffered clerical sex abuse as minors.

The group of around 15 people chosen to meet the pope needed to have experienced "relatively similar cases," said Tommy Scholtes, spokesperson for the Belgian's bishop's conference.

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."