A Belgian Catholic university criticized Pope Francis just minutes after he visited

One of Belgium’s Catholic universities strongly disagreed with Pope Francis on Saturday about how women should be treated in society. They said this in a strong press release that came out right after the pope spoke at the college.

At UCLouvain, where the 87-year-old pope spoke on Saturday afternoon, professors and students said they wanted to voice their “incomprehension and disapproval” of his views.

It was strange for a Catholic university to say such harsh things about the pope in their statement: “UCLouvain…deplores the conservative positions expressed by Pope Francis on the role of women in society.”

Francis went to the university on Saturday to help celebrate its 600th anniversary. He did this as part of a trip to Belgium over the weekend. In his speech, he mostly called for everyone to do something about climate change. But he also answered a letter from students and teachers who wanted to know what the Catholic Church teaches about women.

The pope made it clear that the Church was not run like a business. “A woman … is a daughter, a sister, a mother, just as a man is a son, a brother, a father,” he added.

The pope also said that women have “a fertile welcome, care, and vital devotion.”

The university said that the pope’s view on women’s roles in society was “deterministic and reductive.”

During his trip to Belgium, Francis has been criticized at events. The country’s king and prime minister asked the pope to do more to help women who have been abused by Catholic clergy. A rector at a different Catholic university also asked him to think again about the Catholic Church’s rule that women can’t become priests.

UCLouvain is a university in Belgium where people speak French. It has 20 faculties where about 38,000 people study.

Priests in the Catholic Church are all men. There are two groups that Francis set up to look into whether women could be deacons. Like priests, deacons are ordained but can’t say Mass, but the problem hasn’t moved forward yet.

But in his 11 years as pontiff, Francis has also changed the Vatican’s main governing text to let women run departments and has made it possible for women to vote for the first time at synods, which are large meetings of bishops from around the world.