2023-09-03 17:02:00
There are probably not dozens of forecourts as beautiful as that of Saint-Rombaut’s cathedral in Mechelen, which opens onto the town’s main square. This Sunday followingnoon, it was bathed in sunshine to welcome believers, dignitaries, the King and Queen who had come to the episcopal ordination of Luc Terlinden, new archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, the most important diocese in the country.
The day was expected by Catholics. Chosen in June by Pope Francis to succeed Cardinal De Kesel, the “young” Luc Terlinden, aged 54, begins what might be a 20-year episcopate, until his retirement age. That is to say that following the short passages of his two predecessors – Mgr Léonard and Mgr De Kesel – the arrival of Luc Terlinden garners as much unanimity as it is accompanied by great expectations. Renowned as a man of listening and files, doctor of theology, close to the Catholic youth with whom he has always invested himself, Luc Terlinden finds himself at the foot of important projects which will shape the Church of tomorrow in Belgium: place des believers in society, lay people and women within the institution, future of parishes…
The Last Leper of Molokai
The Example of Damien of Molokai
This Sunday’s ordination, sober and warm, supported by youth and children’s choirs and an African choir, will have brought together dozens of priests and deacons, brought together representatives of many denominations, thousands of Internet users in streaming and filled the cathedral of Mechelen as well as the gardens of the archdiocese from where one might follow the mass. It will also have made it possible to distinguish the face that Bishop Terlinden wishes to give to the Church in Belgium in the 21st century. He has in fact explicitly placed himself in the footsteps of two of his predecessors: Mgr Danneels who “remains for [lui] a model”, and Cardinal De Kesel, to whom he is very close and was his right arm for two years. The latter, he said, opened “new paths, those of a Church more humble but no less faithful to the Gospel, called to be a sign in the midst of the world of God’s love for all. These are the convictions that inhabit me today”.
Luc Terlinden, in this, also places himself very clearly in the wake of Pope Francis and synodality, that is to say the common reflection that the Pope initiated by bringing together all Catholics on the future of Church.
“Pope Francis clearly lays down the essential condition for following such a path: humility of heart”, insisted the new archbishop, aware of the concerns that this initiative raises within Catholicism. “I would like to take as an example a saint from here, born a few kilometers from here, Saint Damien of Molokai, he concluded to clarify his point. If he had a strong character, Damien was also poor in heart, without which he might not have made himself available to Jesus’ call to leave everything to become the brother of the lepers in Molokai. Moreover, he did not say: ‘I and the lepers’, but: ‘We the lepers’. Damien invites us, through humility of heart, to live fraternity in the peripheries of existence. Where will our Molokai be?
As Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, Luc Terlinden is at the head of an ecclesiastical province which brings together the eight Belgian dioceses. It is therefore he who will now symbolically hold the helm of a Church in Belgium which will once more see, in the coming months, several bishops – having reached retirement age – being replaced. Finally, let us note that he chose Canon Steven Wielandts as vicar general (his right arm).
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