By Joshua McElwee
LUXEMBOURG CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis arrived in Luxembourg on Thursday for a brief day-visit to one of Europe’s smallest countries ahead of a weekend trip to Belgium, where he will highlight the needs of migrants and meet with a group of survivors of abuse by Catholic clergy.
The Thursday-Sunday Luxembourg and Belgium tour is a rare European visit for Francis, who prefers going to places never visited by a pope, or where Catholics are a small minority. It comes less than two weeks after Francis returned from a demanding 12-day, four-country tour across Southeast Asia and Oceania.
The 87-year-old pontiff landed at Luxembourg’s Findel International Airport on a chartered ITA airways flight also carrying his entourage and accompanying reporters. The pope will spend the day in the country, before heading on in the evening to Brussels, the Belgian capital.
Belgium’s ambassador to the Vatican, Patrick Renault, said Francis was expected to meet a group of 15 abuse survivors there privately.
Belgium, like many countries, has uncovered cases of clerical sexual abuse. In March, the pope expelled from the priesthood a former Belgian bishop who admitted to sexually abusing two nephews. More than 700 complaints and reports of abuse involving the church have been made in Belgium since 2012, according to a church report.
On Thursday, Francis will hold private meetings with Luxembourg’s Grand Duke Henri, the monarch, and Prime Minister Luc Frieden before giving a speech to the country’s political authorities. He will also hold a meeting with local Catholics at Luxembourg City’s Notre-Dame Cathedral.
On Friday morning, Francis is due to meet Belgium’s King Philippe and Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, and then give a speech.
On the flight from Rome Thursday morning, Francis briefly greeted the journalists traveling on the plane with him, but did not tour the aircraft to meet them individually, as he usually does.
The pope, who has difficulty walking due to knee and back pain, said he did not feel up to “making the trip” around the back of the single-aisle aircraft.
Luxembourg, a country with an area of 2,586 square km (998 square miles), counts about 271,000 Catholics among its 654,000 population, the Vatican says.
(Reporting by Joshua McElwee, editing by Bart Meijer)
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