Israel-hater and Nobel Peace Prize candidate Belgian priest admits child abuse 40 years ago

We wrote this post in October : François Houtart, Hamas supporter Belgian priest, the next Nobel Peace Prize laureate ? and this one in 2009 François Houtart, a Belgian anti-Zionist priest, awarded UNESCO prize for tolerance and non-violence.  One of his recent initiatives aiming at delegitimising Israel is his support for the Israel-bashing Russell Tribunal created by another Belgian Pierre Galand.

It has now come to light that the "Pope of anti-globalisation" was a child molester.  His cousin was so shocked when she heard that he was being nominated for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize and the way he was being celebrated as a great man in Belgium that she decided to speak out.  This is a translation of part of her account of the facts, which, unsurprisingly, differs from Houtart's own account minimising the horror of what happened :

"[...] the man committed the crime of rape on my brother 40 years ago. My father died this year and was the same age as A and was his friend. He venerated him as a great man until that night when he stayed over at my parents' home and broke twice into my brother's room to rape him. Before this happened a third time, my brother told my parents who kept him their own room. But the next morning over breakfast, they treated A as if nothing had happened so that he could give his lecture in Liège. My brother had been "left" with a neighbor. A few days later, my father went to find A in Leuven to speak with him about what he had done to his son and asked him to apologize. But he did not and went one further, he told my father that  "Nothing could be more normal!" After this my father banished him forever as a friend. My brother was never recognized as a victim of child abuse! It is hard to imagine that A has not committed other rapes on other children ...".

Source: Daily Mail

A Belgian Catholic priest and would-be Nobel Peace Prize holder has admitted that he sexually abused an eight-year-old boy 40 years ago.  The case only came forward when his cousin, the sister of his victim, came forward in reaction to a campaign to nominate Francois Houtart for the accolade.  She told the Belgian church authority that looks into child abuse, the Adriaenssens commission, that the abuse on her brother happened in 1970 while he stayed at their house.

Houtart, 85, was a prominent third world activist and chairman of a development agency that he founded in 1976, Center Tricontinental, until he resigned from the board in November in light of the allegations.
He is currently in Ecuador and was not responding to phone calls or emails but told Belgian newspaper, Le Soir, that he twice touched ‘the intimate parts’ of a boy he described as his cousin and said the incident was ‘inconsiderate and irresponsible’.


The priest said he spoke to the victim’s parents to see if they wanted him to quit as a priest but they told him to speak to a professor in Brussels. They advised him to stay in the priesthood and concentrate on his academic work in religious sociology.

Houtart also told the newspaper that he had asked supporters to suspend the campaign for his nomination for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.

Once dubbed as the ‘Pope of anti-globalisation’ he was professor of sociology at the Catholic University of Brussels from 1958 until 1990.  He attended the second Vatican council for three years from 1962 and was one of the pioneers of the first World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in 2001 - an event when countries gather to look at different ways of running democracies.

Houtart is the eldest of 14 children and grandson of County Henry Carton de Wiart, a pioneer of the Catholic Party and Belgian Prime Minister from 1920 to 1921.