Paedophile Bishop Becomes Cartoon Bad Guy

The Expatica
August 22, 2012

http://www.expatica.com/be/news/belgian-news/Paedophile-bishop-becomes-cartoon-bad-guy-_241307.html

Belgium's disgraced former Bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, features in the latest album of the tremendously popular Kiekeboe series.

Belgium's disgraced former Bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, features in the latest album of the tremendously popular Kiekeboe series. Vangheluwe has admitted paedophile abuse of a relative but escaped prosecution because of the time that elapsed between the abuse and the time it came to light.

The new album is being published next year, but installments are already appearing in newspapers of the Concentra Group. It is entitled "Sanctimonious Blood". The disgraced cleric features as "Monseigneur Howrandyman". In the strip cartoon Howrandyman has taken refuge in the Holy Blood Chapel in Bruges and we see how he takes a baby vampire on his knee. In reality the former bishop found accommodation in a Trappist abbey.

Cartoonist Merho says that he had been thinking about a story located in the Holy Blood Chapel in Bruges for some time. As it's Bruges it seemed quite right to throw in Vangheluwe, he says in an interview.

"It's the caricature of a dirty old man. The bishop in the story wears a mitre day and night, but there's no physical resemblance to Vangheluwe. For me there are no taboos."

Merho also reveals that the bishop meets an unfortunate fate, while the baby vampire is unscathed.