BASTA - Genesis

When I was first invited to meet Pope Francis, I accepted out of curiosity, but also for a deeply personal reason. I hoped that participating in this process might encourage my best friend Bart to open up about his own abuse and perhaps find some measure of peace. I had long since drifted away from the Church and had no real connection to it. The first meeting in Brussels on September 27, 2024, left many of us cautiously hopeful. We believed that perhaps, this time, with this Pope, things might finally change.

That hope faded quickly. As meetings multiplied, we encountered a level of dysfunction that was hard to grasp. At first, I gave the Church the benefit of the doubt, following Hanlon’s razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” But delays, evasions, and a lack of concrete action made that assumption increasingly difficult to sustain, especially after encountering the farce that is Tutela Minorum.

In parallel with these meetings, I began writing letters to the Pope … informal “school report cards” evaluating whether promises were turning into action on four concrete issues: treatment, compensation, accountability, and direct contact. Pope Francis replied. His successor, Pope Leo, did not.

After months of silence and unanswered proposals, I concluded that communication itself had broken down. One of these letters was eventually published in La Libre Belgique, marking a clear break with quiet diplomacy. The correspondence then culminated in a resignation letter, signed by eleven of the fifteen survivors invited to the papal audience, requesting the removal of Archbishop Terlinden and placed directly into the Pope’s hands … a step that may yet require a follow-up.

This growing disillusionment gave rise to BASTA!. In less than two years, after two meetings with the Pope, countless exchanges, and repeated attempts to cooperate, we reached a point where silence was no longer possible.

This website has two purposes: to give a voice to victims and sympathisers who have had enough and wish to say BASTA!, and to document our journey from cautious optimism to open opposition.

Enough is enough. BASTA!