By Joanna Sugden
The Times
April 23, 2010
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7106284.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093
The longest-serving Roman Catholic bishop in Belgium has resigned after admitting sexually abusing a boy for years. Roger Vangheluwe, 73, said that he was "enormously sorry" for molesting the boy from before he was made Bishop of Bruges in 1985.
The Vatican accepted his resignation only a day after a lawsuit was filed in the US against Pope Benedict XVI over sex abuse committed by an American priest.
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| Roger Vangheluwe said he was 'enormously sorry' for the abuse Photo by Edwin Fontaine |
The Catholic Church is reeling from the departures of several senior figures over abuse scandals, including Walter Mixa, a senior German bishop close to the Pope, who resigned on Thursday after admitting beating children at an orphanage.
Mr Vangheluwe is the most senior cleric to step down over child sex abuse during the crisis. In a statement read by the head of the Catholic Church in Belgium, Archbishop André-Joséph Leonard, the bishop said: "When I was not a bishop, and some time later, I abused a boy. This has marked the victim mentally forever. The wound does not heal. Neither in me nor the victim."
Church officials said that Mr Vangheluwe would not be prosecuted because the crime had not been reported within the country's statute of limitations, understood to be ten years after the victim turns 18 for cases of child sex abuse.
A commission set up to investigate claims of abuse in Belgium has received 20 new cases this year, a spokesman said. The bishop offered his resignation to the Vatican on Tuesday after details of his behaviour were sent by the family of his victim to the retired former archbishop of Belgium and other bishops this month.
"Over the past decades, I asked for the forgiveness of him and his family," added Mr Vangheluwe. "But the media storm of the past few weeks only reinforced his trauma. It was not tenable any more. I regret what I did and offer my most sincere apologies to the victim, his family, all the Catholic community and society."
His resignation was accepted under a canon law provision for illness or unspecified "other serious reasons", the Vatican said. The disgraced bishop did not appear at the news conference.
Despite his admissions about his conduct, Archbishop Leonard called Mr Vangheluwe a "great brother and dynamic bishop" but said that his transgression would shock many. "We are aware of the crisis of confidence his resignation will set in motion," he said. He emphasised that the Catholic Church in Belgium was determined to "turn over a leaf".
In his Easter homily he addressed the paedophilia scandals that have surfaced in the Catholic Church, saying that in the past "the reputation of Church leaders was given a higher priority than that of abused children".
The Catholic Church in Belgium has a weak record of dealing with sexual abusers in its ranks. In 2000 it created a panel to look into abuse complaints, which quickly clashed with the Church leadership. The panel has accused the Church of tardiness in compensating victims.
The lawsuit in the US has been filed by an alleged victim of Father Lawrence Murphy, a priest accused of molesting up to 200 boys at a school for the deaf in Wisconsin. The writ names the Pope in an attempt to open secret files on investigations into sex abuse. The Vatican's lawyer dismissed the case as " without merit".
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