Frans van der Lugt

Franciscus Joseph Wilhelmus van der Lugt, SJ, known as Frans van der Lugt or Pater Frans (10 April 1938

His cause for canonization has been on hold since 2022 after discovery of his controversial comments minimizing clerical sex abuse.

Biography Van der Lugt was born into a banker's family and grew up in Amsterdam. His father was Godefridus Wilhelmus Antonius van der Lugt, president of the Nederlandsche Landbouwbank. His brother Godfried van der Lugt became a top executive with the Postbank and later the ING Group. Van der Lugt studied as a psychotherapist but left the Netherlands for the Middle East in the 1960s, where he joined the Jesuits and spent two years in Lebanon where he studied Arabic. In 1966 he went to Syria, where he lived for nearly fifty years.

Van der Lugt started a community center and farm in 1980, the Al-Ard Center, just outside the city of Homs. The farm had vineyards and gardens in which much of the work was done by people with disabilities, providing an unprecedented resource in a society in which such people are usually hidden from view. Translated from Arabic. He refused to leave, despite the dangerous situation. In February, The Economist reported that he was probably the last European in the city and stayed because he was "the shepherd of [his] flock": He declined being evacuated during a UN operation in 2014 that saved 1400 people from the besieged city.

Van der Lugt was known for helping Christians and Muslims alike; the Al-Ard Center aimed to foster dialog between people of different faiths. In an interview in 2012, he explained how they held a church service after a bombardment; by this time, he said, all the Catholics had left, leaving only Orthodox Christians and Muslims to celebrate Palm Sunday in his church. The imam preached at the service. Van der Lugt later said that the sermon had removed from him any residual tendencies to place emphasis on dogma. aged 75. He was the second foreign-born Jesuit in that area to fall victim to the Syrian civil war: Paolo Dall'Oglio was kidnapped in 2013.

Possible sainthood Following van der Lugt's death, there was enthusiasm that he could be beatified in the Catholic Church as a martyr for the Christian faith. The superior general of the Jesuits and the Bishop of Aleppo were reportedly in support of beginning the process. However, it was reported in 2022 that van der Lugt had previously made comments to tourists minimizing the Catholic clerical sex abuse crisis, and that the discovery of said comments had derailed the canonization efforts.