By Philippe Siuberski
AFP
September 13, 2010
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jCa50zJQci-Zq7KBh6ze-REh46dQ
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| Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard |
BRUSSELS — Belgium's Catholic Church sought Monday to heal deep wounds caused to victims of paedophile priests, vowing to listen to those hurt by a scandal that has caused "much pain" to Pope Benedict XVI.
But the plan unveiled by Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard, the head of the Belgian Church, disappointed groups representing victims three days after a report revealed an avalanche of abuse cases that led to 13 suicides.
Leonard told a news conference the Church would grant victims of sexual abuse by priests or Church workers "maximum" access to officials, but did not spell out how audiences would be obtained or what could be delivered.
He announced vague plans to create a centre for "recognition, reconciliation and healing" within the Church, with a target date for opening of Christmas.
Leonard said the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Belgium had to "listen" to victims and parishioners in order to restore personal trust.
That followed the admission by a bishop who quit that he paid a victim and persistent media allegations of a Church cover-up.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said the pope was following the situation in Belgium "very closely" after the report by a Church-sponsored commission revealed decades of abuse by Belgian priests.
"Like everybody, he feels much pain after the publication of the report, which again reveals the huge suffering of victims and gives us an even more vivid sense of the gravity of the crimes," Lombardi told RTL-TVI television.
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| Pope Benedict XVI sits at the Vatican during his weekly general audience |
Following a string of similar scandals in Germany, Ireland and the United States, the dam broke in Belgium in April when the disgraced bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, quit having admitted sexually abusing his nephew between 1973 and 1986.
Vangheluwe announced on Sunday that he would now leave the Westvleteren abbey where he had sought refuge for several months to withdraw "to another place, away from the Bruges diocese".
"As my regrets have only increased, now I see all the harm that my actions caused," he said then.
Asked if the pope would defrock Vangheluwe, Lombardi said Benedict could consider such a sanction but a decision had not been taken.
"It is a decision that rests solely with the pope," the spokesman said.
For his part Leonard reiterated a call for guilty priests and Church workers to confess their crimes as well as their sins, saying past pleas to come forward had "not really been heard".
In a bid to learn from the "errors of the past", the archbishop said the new, open-door policy was aimed at re-establishing victims' "dignity" and helping "to heal the suffering they have endured".
The Church's plans left an association of victims of sex abuse by priests distinctly underwhelmed and questioned the independence of the reconciliation centre.
"You can't investigate crimes committed when the body is controlled by the institution itself," said Human Rights in the Church spokeswoman Lieve Halsberghe.
Gabriel Ringlet, a priest and influential Catholic figure, said he would have wanted the Church to do more.
"I would have liked the bishops to say that they would deeply examine these questions of sexual morality, that there is maybe a dysfunction in the organisation of the Church which leads to these situations," he told RTL-TVI.
A 200-page report published Friday by the Commission on Church-related Sexual Abuse Complaints, set up by the Roman Catholic Church, said it had investigated 475 complaints between January and June this year.
Available at www.commissionabus.be, it contains testimonies from some 124 anonymous "survivors" and reveals that the sexual abuse for most victims began at age 12, although one was aged just two.
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| Police patrol outside the St. Rumbold's Cathedral after a raid in June |
The Belgian parliament's justice committee will debate the matter on Friday, with Socialists angrily pursuing "bids to privatise justice" by the Church with its talk of a new victim support centre.
"The Belgian authorities have not grasped the scale of this seismic shock," said Belgium's Greens, who want a parliamentary inquiry.
Files seized in raids by Belgian judicial authorities in June have been systematically struck off by judges from admissible evidence.
Meanwhile, Belgian police questioned Monday a convicted Flemish priest who faces fresh complaints of sexual abuse in Canada, but stopped short of an arrest in the absence of extradition moves.
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