Luc Terlinden

Luc Terlinden is a Belgian prelate of the Catholic Church, who has been Archbishop of Malines-Brussels and head of the Military Ordinariate of Belgium since September 2023. He is president of the Conference of Belgian bishops. He is the second youngest prelate to become primate of Belgium.

Biography
Luc Terlinden was born in Etterbeek on 17 October 1968. He is the youngest of seven children born to Colonel Baron Maximilien Terlinden (1927-2016) and Geneviève van der Rest (1935-2002).

He attended the Institut Saint-Stanislas in Brussels from 1980 to 1986. He began his university work in commercial and management engineering at the Catholic University of Louvain and earned a degree in economics at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1991, having chosen the latter to perfect his Dutch. He completed his military service in Siegen, Germany, as a reserve officer in the 1st Guide Regiment. While in the military, he joined in a pilgrimage to Lourdes. After a brief stint as a teacher he entered the diocesan seminary. He was ordained a deacon on 16 October 1998 and a priest on 18 September 1999, both by Cardinal Godfried Danneels. He has described having a profound spiritual experience at World Youth Day in Rome in 2000.

He then earned a licentiate in moral theology in 2001 at the Alphonsian Academy in Rome and a doctorate in moral theology in 2005. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the internalization of moral sources according to the writings of Charles Taylor and John Henry Newman.

In 2003, he was appointed vicar for the parish of Saint-François in Louvain-la-Neuve and in 2010 parish priest of the Sainte-Croix pastoral unit in Ixelles. He also founded Pôles Jeunes for young people in Brussels between 18 and 30 years old. From 2005 to 2014 he also had responsibility for the diocesan vocational service. In 2017, he became president of the seminary for the French-speaking dioceses of Belgium, member of the diocesan council for the archdiocese Mechelen-Brussels and a canon of the chapter of Saint-Rombaux. He also became a professor at the major seminary of Namur.

In September 2021, Terlinden was appointed vicar general for the Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels. He is a member of the Charles de Foucauld fraternity for priests and spiritual advisor of a "Équipe Notre-Dame", a spirituality movement for married couples. He is chaplain of the Saint-André scout unit "de Coninck". He has been a lifelong enthusiast of the scouting movement, beginning as a member in his youth. He enjoys cycling and mountaineering.

On 22 June 2023, Pope Francis named Terlinden to succeed Cardinal Jozef De Kesel as archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels. Terlinden's name had been the one most often mentioned as De Kesel's successor. His appointment follows the tradition of alternating between a native speaker of French and of Dutch when filling this position, though most likely candidates in the modern era are bilingual. He was the first cleric not yet a bishop named to this position in nearly a century. On 28 June he received a second appointment, head of the Military Ordinariate of Belgium. He has chosen as his episcopal motto "Tous frères", based on the title of Pope Francis's encyclical Fratelli tutti. In anticipation of his installation in September, he received the pallium, the symbol of his office as a metropolitan, from Pope Francis on 29 June. He is ex officio chancellor of the Catholic universities of Leuven and Louvain.

He received his episcopal consecration on 3 September 2023 in the Cathedral of Saint Rumbold in Mechelen from De Kesel, his predecessor, with Bishops Johan Bonny of Antwerp and François Touvet of Châlons (France) serving as co-consecrators. King Philippe and Queen Mathilde attended the ceremony. At the age of 54, he was the second youngest prelate to assume the title of primate of Belgium, after Godfried Danneels, who was 46.

On 12 October 2023, he was elected president of the Conference of Belgian Bishops.