By David Charter
The Herald
June 29, 2010
http://www.herald.ie/world-news/vatican-at-war-in-fresh-crisis-over-child-abuse-2238723.html
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| CRISIS: Pope Benedict speaks out as nightmare deepens for the Catholic Church |
BLOW: US refuses to grant immunity as Belgium probe row deepens
The resignation en masse of a Church-appointed child abuse commission in Belgium left the Vatican struggling with widening paedophile scandals on both sides of the Atlantic.
A war of words broke out between the Vatican and Brussels after the Pope condemned as deplorable the seizure by police of the commission's files, and the detention of nine bishops for an entire day last week.
Pope Benedict spoke out again yesterday, warning an Austrian cardinal against repeating accusations that a senior Italian cardinal covered up child abuse claims at the highest level.
The crisis enveloping the global Catholic Church deepened last night when the US Supreme Court opened the way for the Vatican to be sued by the victims of paedophile priests.
Crimes
The Vatican had wanted the court to throw out a lawsuit seeking to hold it responsible for the crimes of a priest who was moved from Ireland to Chicago, and then to Portland, to escape prosecution. Yesterday, the court rejected the Vatican's argument that, as a sovereign state, it enjoyed immunity from prosecution in the US.
A similar Church-versus-state conflict is unfolding in Belgium. A commission of inquiry into child abuse, set up by the Church there in 2000, has long suffered from allegations of inertia. It focused on about 30 cases and tried to resolve them between the parties involved rather than hand over details for prosecution.
Peter Adriaenssens, a respected child psychiatrist, was brought in to chair the commission this year to restore confidence. But the panel was overwhelmed with hundreds of fresh allegations after the resignation in April of Roger Vangheluwe (73), the Bishop of Bruges, for abusing a boy over several years.
Last Thursday, police seized 475 case files from the commission offices, as they stepped up their own investigation after suspicions that senior Church figures were being protected from the law.
Such was the police mistrust of the Church inquiry, and the atmosphere of paranoia surrounding the affair, that they drilled into the tombs of two cardinals then used a camera to look for documents, although none were found.
Police also seized computer files from the home of Cardinal Godfried Danneels, who led the Church in Belgium for 20 years and faced allegations that he ignored claims of abuse.
Mr Adriaenssens (53) a part-time professor at the Catholic University of Leuven, was yesterday furious that his team's documents were seized.
"We were used as bait," he said, suggesting that accusers had come forward confident in the anonymity afforded by his commission.
Seized
The resignation of the Adriaenssens commission leaves no buffer between the Church and the police -- but raises a legal question mark over whether any of the documents which were seized could be used in court because of the way information was given under condition of anonymity.
In a sign of the tension felt in the Vatican, it issued an unusually blunt statement yesterday in which it effectively said that the Pope had censured Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna, who last month publicly accused another cardinal of covering up abuse.
"We remind everyone that, in the Church, only the Pope has the authority to accuse a cardinal," said the statement -- a rare case of the Church making its internal bickering public.
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