Global IssuesShould King Baudouin, DRCs Last Sovereign, Be Beatified?
GOMA, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jan 24 (IPS) - While the Vatican has launched the process for the beatification of King Baudoin I of Belgium in 2024, opinions remain divided on the need for this decision in the DRC, a country that Belgium colonized for 80 years. The country's Catholic Church has not officially expressed an opinion on the matter, leaving many questions unanswered.During his visit to the Kingdom of Belgium in September 2024, Pope Francis was full of praise for King Baudouin, who ruled Belgium for more than 40 years.
The pontiff announced the start of the beatification process for the man who, on the Belgian side, ratified the Congo's act of independence on June 30, 1960.
A decision widely controversial in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a former Belgian colony and private property of King Leopold II for 23 years.
Maranatha Julienne, a 30-year-old resident of Goma in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, does not agree with the papal decision.
In her opinion, the measure is hasty and absurd. She says she lost her great-grandparents during the colonial period, and that beatifying King Baudouin is the worst “mistake” the Catholic Church can make against the Congolese.
“I don't know on what basis the decision to launch the King Baudouin process was taken. I don't have any good testimonies about this Belgian monarch. He was at the root of colonization and certain blunders. In my opinion, it makes no sense to sanctify him,” she says, calling on the Holy See to halt the process.
According to data, almost half of the Congolese population is Catholic, making the country one of the most Catholicized in Africa and the rest of the world.
Whether in politics or in development issues in the country, the presence of the Catholic Church is felt, according to many researchers.
During his visit to Belgium, Pope François paid tribute to King Baudouin, referring to him as a “very religious” sovereign, underlining his courage when he chose to leave his throne rather than sign a law he considered “immoral.”
The king stepped down for one day in 1990 rather than assent to a government bill legalizing abortion. He was reinstated by parliament the day after the bill was passed.
The pope's tribute was dismissed out of hand by Jacques Sinzahera, a Goma-based democracy and human rights activist. He objects to the decision, arguing that Baudouin's life was not in “divine mode.”
Rather, he describes him as a “bloodsucker” of the Congolese people, whose beatification process ignores those who lost their loved ones during the colonial period, he says.
“To want to beatify King Baudouin is to spit on the memory of our ancestors who were massacred, tortured and enslaved by this monarch. Belgium, under Baudouin's reign, massacred people for economic gain, and the vestiges are still there,” Sinzahera said, asking the Catholic congregation of the DRC to plead with Rome to reconsider its approach.
This view is not shared by Alice Keza, a 30-year-old citizen of Goma. She thinks it's a good decision to beatify the Belgian monarch.
“Our parents tell us that during colonization, they were like slaves. It was he who did everything for the DRC to gain its independence in 1960. I know that the Vatican cannot (just) wake up and take such a decision,” she says.
King Baudouin visited the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1955, at the height of the colonial era, and was greeted by a human throng in Leopoldville, now Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC.
For Tumsifu Akram, a researcher on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, King Baudouin is one of the most famous European monarchs of the 20th century.
“He was a very popular monarch, not only in Belgium but throughout Europe. In Africa, during his first visit, some Congolese nicknamed him Bwana Kitoko (Gentleman),” he tells IPS.
Congolese researcher Akramm Tumsifu maintains that King Baudouin has a “black mark” that threatens his canonization.
“It was under his reign (in Belgium) that Patrice Lumumba and his companions and many other Congolese nationalists were murdered in Congo, and we can't say he was innocent in all that. He was a good friend of Moise Tshombe, who ran the secessionist Katanga where Patrice Lumumba was liquidated, and it's dark for him,” he notes.
Lumumba, the first prime minister of the DRC, then known as the Republic of Congo, had only served for a few months in 1960 when a mutiny broke out in the army. Joseph-Désiré Mobutu (Mobutu Sese Seko), serving as Chief of Staff of the Army and supported by Belgium and the United States, deposed Lumumba's democratically elected left-wing nationalist government in 1960. He was then captured en route to Stanleyville and, with the help of Belgian partisans and with the knowledge of the United States, was tortured and executed by the separatist Katangan authorities of Tshombe.
In 2021, on the 60th anniversary of Congo's independence, the reigning monarch, King Philippe of Belgium, expressed his "deepest regrets" for his country's brutal colonialist past.
Officially, the Catholic Church in the Democratic Republic of Congo has yet to comment on the case. On October 22, 2024, when asked what Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, head of the Catholic Church in the DRC, thought of Pope Francis' wish, the Congolese Cardinal said he was “following the case like everyone else,” stressing that it was “the Church of Belgium that is following the case.”
“The Church of Belgium is following this case. King Baudouin was the king at the time of Congo's independence. It is said that it was he who gave the Congo its independence. We know that something happened with the death of Prime Minister Lumumba. For us, he was a very courageous politician in the Belgian context. We don't know the twists and turns of his life,” said Ambongo, Archbishop of Kinshasa, DRC.
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© Inter Press Service (2025) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service