A Belgian Catholic archbishop who said HIV is “justice” for gays has been hit in the face with custard pies.

Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard, the head of the country’s Catholic Church, was targeted on Tuesday while speaking at a university near Brussels.

Footage posted on YouTube shows him being hit with pie while walking to the venue and inside it.

According to AFP, one of the people who threw the pies told Belgian reporters: “For all those homosexuals who daren’t tell their parents they are gay, for all those young girls who want to have an abortion, he absolutely deserved it.”

There is a tradition of gay rights campaigners using pie for protest. In 1977, US gay rights opponent Anita Bryant was ‘pied’ on camera at a press conference.

Archbishop Leonard made his comments about HIV last year.

“All I’m saying is that sometimes there are consequences linked to our actions,” the archbishop said, “this [HIV] epidemic is a sort of intrinsic justice.”

He is also said to have called homosexuality a travesty of nature and suggested that elderly paedophile priests should not be punished.

His spokesman Juergen Mettepenningen resigned over his boss’ remarks, saying: “Monsignor Leonard at times acts like a motorist driving on the wrong side of a freeway who thinks all the other motorists are wrong.”