Paul Tuns:
King Baudoin of Belgium was the head of state from 1951-1993 except for a 36-hour period in April 1990 when he briefly deposed from the throne with his consent in order to not sign a law decriminalizing abortion. A devout Catholic who refused to be implicated in allowing abortion in his country, King Baudoin, the fifth king of Belgium, is now being considered for sainthood in the Catholic Church.
The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints said on Dec. 21 that it had established a historical commission on Dec. 17, a group of experts to collect and document relevant material to consideration of King Baudoin’s potential sainthood.
The Dicastery said, “The Holy Father Francis, during his recent apostolic journey to Belgium, announced the opening of the cause of beatification and canonization of Baudouin, king of the Belgians.”
After the Belgian legislature decriminalized abortion, King Baudoin said he could not in good conscience give it royal assent to make the bill law. He was deposed after he asked the Belgian Parliament to temporarily declare him unable to reign in order to avoid his complicity in permitting abortion. For just more than one day, the Belgian government as a whole became the head of state, temporarily replacing the king in that role. The day after abortion-on-demand became law in Belgium, Parliament reconvened to declare Baudoin capable of reigning, returning to him the crown.
During a 1995 general audience, Pope John Paul II called King Baudoin a “great guardian of the rights of the human conscience.” Pope John Paul II said King Baudoin was “ready to defend the commandments, and especially the Fifth Commandment: ‘Thou shalt not kill’, especially with regard to the protection of the life of unborn children.”
During a visit to Belgium last September, Pope Francis visited King Baudoin’s tomb, which lays in a royal crypt at Our Lady of Laeken in Brussels, where he praised Baudoin’s choice to “leave his place as king in order not to sign a murderous law.”
ACI Prensa, a Spanish Catholic news agency, reported that one of Baudoin’s relatives said, the late king’s “whole life was a testimony to the living Christ,” and “As he said, what we have to aspire to is to be saints.”
