Lode Van Hecke, O.C.S.O. | |
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Bishop of Ghent | |
Church | Roman Catholic Church |
Appointed | 27 November 2019 |
Predecessor | Lucas Van Looy |
Successor | Incumbent |
Other post(s) | Abbot of Orval Abbey (2007–2019) |
Orders | |
Ordination | 20 August 1995 (Priest) |
Consecration | 23 February 2020 by Jozef De Kesel |
Personal details | |
Born | Lode Van Hecke 16 March 1950 |
Motto | Latin: Cum Gaudio Spiritus Sancti In the joy of Saint spirit |
Styles of Lode Van Hecke | |
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Reference style | |
Spoken style | Your Excellency |
Religious style | Bishop |
Lode Van Hecke OCSO (born 16 March 1950) is a Belgian Catholic prelate who serves as Bishop of Ghent. He was previously abbot of Orval Abbey from 2007 to November 2019. A monk since 1976, he is the only Trappist ever to be appointed bishop of a Belgian diocese. [1]
Van Hecke was born in Roeselare in West Flanders on 16 March 1950. After graduating from secondary school he spent a year at Bruges seminary and then studied philosophy at KU Leuven. He interrupted his studies for military service and became secretary to the head chaplain of the Belgian army. He returned to KU Leuven and earned his licenciate in philosophy with a dissertation on A. N. Whitehead. [2] [3] On 24 September 1976 he entered Orval Abbey and took his final vows as a Trappist on 6 March 1983. He obtained the degree of Licentiate of Sacred Theology from KU Leuven in 1988, with a thesis on Bernard of Clairvaux, [4] and was ordained to the priesthood on 20 August 1995. [2] [5]
At Orval he served as novice master from 1990 to 1998, brewery director from 1998 to 2001, and prior and bursar from 2000 to 2002. He left the Abbey to work as secretary to the Abbot General of the Cistercians in Rome from 2002 to 2004. Returning to Orval, in 2005 he became guestmaster. He was elected Abbot of Orval on 25 January 2007 and installed on 2 June. [2] [5]
Pope Francis appointed him bishop of Ghent on 27 November 2019. [2] [6] He received his episcopal consecration from Jozef De Kesel, Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, on 23 February 2020 in a service attended by Queen Paola and representatives of the Muslim and Jewish communities; Trappist beer was served at the reception that followed. [7]
Ghent is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the province of East Flanders, and the third largest in the country, after Brussels and Antwerp. It is a port and university city.
Trappist beer is brewed by Trappist monks. Thirteen Trappist monasteries—six in Belgium, two in the Netherlands, and one each in Austria, Italy, England, France, and Spain— produce beer, but the Authentic Trappist Product label is assigned by the International Trappist Association (ITA) to just ten breweries that meet their strict criteria. As of 2021, Achel is no longer recognized as a Trappist brewery because it does not have any monks.
Orval Abbey is a Cistercian monastery founded in 1132 in the Gaume region of Belgium, located in Villers-devant-Orval, part of Florenville, Wallonia in the province of Luxembourg. The abbey is well known for its history and spiritual life but also for its local production of the Trappist beer Orval and a specific cheese.
Beer in Belgium includes pale ales, lambics, Flemish red ales, sour brown ales, strong ales and stouts. In 2018, there were 304 breweries in Belgium, including international companies, such as AB InBev, and traditional breweries, such as Trappist monasteries. On average, Belgians drink 68 litres of beer each year, down from around 200 each year in 1900. Most beers are bought or served in bottles, rather than cans, and almost every beer has its own branded, sometimes uniquely shaped, glass. In 2016, UNESCO inscribed Belgian beer culture on their list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.
The Flemish Diamond is the Flemish reference to a network of four metropolitan areas in Belgium, three of which are in the central provinces of Flanders, together with the Brussels-Capital Region. It consists of four agglomerations which form the four corners of an abstract diamond shape: Brussels, Ghent, Antwerp and Leuven.
Willy F. Vande Walle is a Belgian academic, author, Japanologist and Sinologist.
Westmalle Abbey, otherwise the Trappist Abbey of Westmalle, is a monastery of the Cistercians of Strict Observance in Westmalle in the Belgian province of Antwerp.
Frans Van Cauwelaert, was a Belgian Roman Catholic politician and lawyer.
Frank Donck is a Belgian businessman. He is a member of the business club De Warande and director of KBC Group. He is a son of Jef Donck, who owned Comelco, which was sold to Campina.
The Diocese of Ghent is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in Belgium. It is a suffragan in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels. The patron of the diocese is Saint Bavo of Ghent.
Henri Maria Dymphna André Laurent "Rik" Torfs is a Belgian canon law scholar and media personality. He is a former Senator for the Christian Democratic and Flemish party in the Belgian Federal Parliament and a former Rector of the Catholic University of Leuven.
Lucas Van Looy S.D.B. is a Belgian prelate of the Catholic Church who was Bishop of Ghent from 2004 to 2019. He worked as a missionary in South Korea for more than a decade and held leadership positions with the Salesians from 1984 to 2003.
Lode Aerts, identified also as Lodewijk Aerts, is a Belgian prelate of the Catholic Church who has been Bishop of Bruges since December 2016.
Arthur Théodore Verhaegen was a Gothic Revival Belgian architect and a politician of the Catholic Party, one of the founders of Belgian Christian democracy. He was a grandson of the politician and lawyer Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen.
Oscar Joliet was a scholar-priest who served between 1948 and 1969 as the Auxiliary bishop of Ghent.
Antoine Philippe De Schryver (1924–2005) was a Belgian art historian and professor at the University of Ghent, where he lectured on History of Book Illumination. He was specialized in the field of illuminated manuscripts in the Southern Netherlands, 15th century painting, and artists at the Burgundian Court.
Johan Decavele is a Belgian historian and archivist who worked as head of the Culture Department of the City of Ghent. He has mainly published on the history of Ghent and of the Reformation. He contributed to the Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, Monasticon belge, The Golden Delta of the Low Countries and The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation.
Events of the year 2019 in Belgium.
Joris Vandenbroucke is a Belgian politician and member of the Chamber of Representatives. A member of Vooruit, he has represented East Flanders since June 2019. He was a member of the Flemish Parliament from June 2005 to June 2009 and from June 2014 to May 2019.