By Tom Kington
The Guardian
June 27, 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/27/pope-condemns-police-raids-belgium-catholic-church
Pontiff describes raids as 'surprising and deplorable' and demands church is allowed role in investigating abusers in ranks
The Pope today criticised raids on the Catholic church by Belgian police investigating sex abuse claims.
Pope Benedict described the raids as "surprising and deplorable" and demanded that the church be allowed a role in investigating abusers in its ranks.
Last week, police raided the home of a retired bishop, opened the grave of at least one archbishop and detained Belgium's nine current serving bishops as they met, seizing their mobile phones and only releasing them after nine hours.
In a message to the head of the Belgian bishops' conference, Monsignor Andre-Joseph Leonard, Benedict condemned the raids and offered his support to the bishops "in this sad moment".
The Vatican has also protested to Belgium's ambassador to the Holy See.Yesterday, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, said: "There are no precedents for this, not even under communist regimes."
As cases of abuse by priests have emerged throughout Europe this year, the Belgian church has apologised for failing to root out abusers in the past and promised to crack down.
On Friday, Benedict appointed Monsignor Jozef De Kesel as the new bishop of Bruges to replace 73-year-old Roger Vangheluwe, 73, who admitted abusing a boy and resigned in April. He was the first European bishop to step down after confessing to abuse.
As part of their investigation into recent claims of abuse, police last week drilled into the tombs of two archbishops at the Cathedral of Mechelen, north of Brussels, using cameras to look for hidden documents, a church official said. Investigators said only one tomb had been opened.
Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard condemned the raid as being inspired by "crime novels and the Da Vinci Code".
| Pope Benedict called the Belgian police raids 'surprising and deplorable'. Photo by Alessandro Di Meo |
Police also took documents and a computer from the home of former archbishop Godfried Danneels, Leonard's predecessor, and seized documents from an independent panel investigating around 500 cases of suspected abuse by priests.
After initially treating the abuse revelations emerging in Europe as a plot to discredit the church, Vatican officials have increasingly admitted the need for it to cooperate more closely with the civil authorities.
But in his reaction to the Belgian raids, Benedict stressed that abuse within the church needed to be handled by both civil and canon law, "respecting their reciprocal specificity and autonomy".
Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian Bishops' Conference, went further, claiming the police investigation went "beyond the legitimate requirements of justice" and was the sign of a secular government's "desire to attack the church in its entirety" by a secular government.
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