BELGIUM
7 News
Brussels (AFP) – The Catholic Church in Belgium on Saturday took part in a day of recognition for victims of sexual abuse by priests, seven years after a paedophile scandal rocked the institution.
Church leaders and victims of sex abuse spoke to an audience of around a hundred people in a ceremony in the National Basilica of the Sacred Heart also known as the Koekelberg Basilica in the Belgian capital.
The event demonstrates the Church’s will to “resist a culture of silence”, said Cardinal Jozef De Kesel.
In April 2010 the former bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, resigned after acknowledging he had abused two nephews.
Thousands of people later came forward to complain they had been victims of sexual abuse as children by members of the Belgian clergy.
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