Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Queen Astrid Church
The archives of the Catholic Herald contain a number of interesting articles on the Belgian monarchy, particularly King Leopold III and his family. Here is a brief mention of plans to build a Catholic church dedicated to St. Bridget in Brussels, in Swedish style, to honor the late Queen Astrid, a Catholic convert born a Princess of Sweden. The article is dated July 30, 1937. Does anyone know if the plans came to fruition?
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2 comments:
I'm probably catching up to you on this count but I've grown more bothered by Leopold III being skipped over amongst the faithful Belgian monarchs. Leopold I was a Protestant, Leopold II -well no one is going to say anything nice about him, Albert I is praised as a devout Christian and then it usually jumps to King Baudouin. I will take second place to none in my admiration of King Baudouin but it does seem unfair that the real, demonstrable faith of Leopold III is ignored or even denied. Albert I would have influenced his son in matters of faith and I doubt King Baudouin would have been the man he was if the faith had not been stressed to him as a child by his parents so King Leopold III really deserves more credit than he is given. In religion as well as other areas. He may not be the most criticized Belgian monarch but he is certainly the most unjustly criticized.
I agree. One of the things I liked in these articles from Catholic Herald was that they spared no effort to emphasize the faith of Leopold III- they claim he even wanted to be a priest when he was a boy. They also mention that Leopold III and Queen Astrid were so admired as examples of Catholic monarchy in their day, that there was talk of making the Belgian royal family patrons of a worldwide, Catholic movement of laypeople for universal peace and justice. After the Royal Question, though, it seems that Leopold got the reputation of a worldly playboy, rather the way Marie-Antoinette is portrayed, when in fact they were both people of strong faith and spirituality.
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