BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Pope 'feels pain' over
Belgian child sex scandal
By the CNN Wire Staff

September 13, 2010


VATICAN CITY, Sept. 13 (CNN) -- A Vatican spokesman said Monday that Pope Benedict XVI feels much pain after revelations that members of the clergy were involved in widespread sexual abuse of children from the 1950s through the 1980s in Belgium.

"The publishing of this report is a new cause of pain for us, for the victims," said Father Federico Lombardi.

The announcement came after leaders of the Church in Belgium said Catholic priests who abused children should tell their superiors.

"We want to repeat this call with force," Bishop Johan Bonny, the bishop of Antwerp, said. "It is to everyone's advantage that the abuser in a pastoral relationship communicates this fact to his superior" or to a new "center for investigation, healing and reconciliation" which he announced Monday.

Bonny said instead that the Church "envisions the creation" of the new center. The Church has identified four experts to start preparatory work on the center, he said, but he did not name them.

Belgian church officials will begin interviews Tuesday as a follow up to a Church-backed investigation that detailed hundreds of assertions of sexual abuse of children by clergy and others working for the church from the 1950s into the late 1980s. It was led by Dr. Peter Ariaenssens, a psychiatrist.

"From the mistakes of the past, we wish to take the necessary lessons," said Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard, the head of the Catholic Church in Belgium. "In the interviews that will be conducted from tomorrow, we will consider the relevant reflexions and proposals of Professor Ariaenseens."

The process will take time because "it is impossible to try to resolve these traumatic experiences too quickly," Archbishop Leonard said.

It is to everyone's advantage that the abuser in a pastoral relationship communicates this fact to his superior.

"We want to commit ourselves to giving the maximum support for the victims," said Leonard. "We must listen to their questions in order to restore their dignity and help heal the suffering they have endured."

The commission said it received about 500 reports from alleged victims, about 60 percent of them from males.

It cited 320 alleged abusers, of whom 102 were known to have been clergy members from 29 congregations.

Thirteen of the alleged victims committed suicide, it said.

"We can say that not a single congregation escaped sexual abuse of minors by one or more of its members," said the Commission on Church-Related Sexual Abuse Complaints on Friday.

"The stories they contain and suffering make us shudder," Archbishop Leonard said.

Investigators had information about when the abuse started for 233 of the alleged victims. Forty-eight were 12; one was 2; five were 4; eight were 5; seven were 6; ten were 7.

Of the 230 alleged victims about whom investigators said they had reliable information, more than 70 percent are currently between the ages of 40 and 70, it said. Ten percent are 31 to 40.

Four alleged victims are 20 to 30 years of age, and one is younger than 20, it said.

At the other end of the scale, five alleged victims are aged between 80 and 90 years old and one is older than 90.

Belgian police raided Catholic Church headquarters in the country earlier this year and questioned a cardinal over allegations of a cover-up by the church.

Belgian police questioned Gotfried Danneels, the country's former Catholic archbishop, for about 10 hours over accusations he knew of sexual abuse in the church but failed to stop it, the Belgian prosecutor's office told CNN in July.

Danneels was being considered a witness but could become a suspect, prosecutor's spokesman Joseph Colain told CNN.

Danneels, who was questioned July 5, could be interrogated again as the investigation continues, Colain said.

Danneels was archbishop of Brussels for more than 30 years before he stepped down in January. [He retired when he turned 75. Danneels was also a long-time hero to the liberal media for his espousal of their causes, and was one of their favored papabile in the Conclave that elected Cardinal Ratzinger. He notoriously left the Vatican in a huff hours after the Conclave to indicate his displeasure with the result. Strangely, since he became involved in the sex abuse investigations, not one story about him has mentioned all this as a background, and he has largely been almost Teflonized by the MSM. If he had been a conservative cardinal, just imagine how he would have been demonized by now!]

Belgian police raided the national headquarters of the Catholic Church in June over allegations of child abuse, prompting an angry response from Pope Benedict XVI and other church leaders. [The Pope publicly referred to the raid only once, in a letter to Mons. Leonard, saying it was 'surprising and deplorable'. That's not angry! When has Benedict XVI ever shown anger in his responses to anything. Pain, sorrow, condemnation of the offense, yes. But never anger - which is, after all, as wrath, one of the seven deadly sins!]

Investigators seized archdiocese archives covering 25 years as well as personal computers and other personal possessions, said Fernand Keuleneer, a lawyer for the archdiocese.

Police raided Danneels's private residence and the headquarters of the Catholic Church in Belgium, as a meeting of bishops was taking place.

They detained the bishops and other church employees -- even the cook -- for about nine hours, the Rev. Eric De Beukelaer said.

[This report conspicuously omits the news from last week that the Belgian authorities have ruled the raids were wrong, that they returned all the files they had confiscated, and ruled as well that these files could not be admissible as evidence in any further investigation.]

Members of a Belgian church commission that helps sexual abuse victims resigned en masse to protest the raid a week after it took place, said De Beukelaer, a spokesman for the Mechelen-Brussels Archdiocese.

The commission worked with people who have been abused by clergy members, said the spokesman.

The Belgian Prosecutor's Office said in July it is investigating death threats against witnesses and magistrates involved in clergy child abuse cases.

The Vatican criticized the raids but reaffirmed its "strong condemnation of any sinful and criminal abuse of minors by members of the church."

It cited "the need to repair and confront such acts in conformity with the law and teachings of the Gospels."

The Catholic Church is facing allegations that clergy members abused children in at least half a dozen countries, including the Pope's native Germany, as well as Belgium, Ireland, Austria, the Netherlands and the United States. [Thanks, at least, for pointing out that all the hot air and bile spewed over the past several months have been about incidents in a handful of countries, instead of the 'worldwide' occurrence that MSM routinely, shamelessly, and wrongly trumpets!]


Vatican team looking into Irish abuses
will meet victims' groups soon
by Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent

Monday 13 September 2010


The unprecedented Vatican inquiry into the Catholic establishment's handling of clerical sex abuse in Ireland will include dialogue with groups representing abuse victims, the Guardian has learned.

The papal examination, or "apostolic visitation", of Catholic dioceses and orders of priests and nuns will be headed by the former archbishop Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, and will begin within weeks of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Britain this month.

Abuse survivors and priests critical of the church hierarchy's handling of paedophile priests say the visit is a clear sign that the Vatican no longer trusts the Irish Catholic establishment to clean up its own act. [Something of an overstatement, probably, and maybe unfair to the bishops now in place. The point is that Pope Benedict pre-announced these visitations in his March letter to the Catholics of Ireland, and the visitation teams were constituted a few weeks later, each headed by prominent and 'unimpeachable' Catholic bishops - except Murphy-O'Connor himself, whose appointment to be one of them has been criticized because it is thought he himself was too lax about offending priests in his own diocse.]

Patrick Walsh, who was incarcerated [????] in several Christian Brothers schools, including Dublin's notorious Artane, and is co-founder of Irish Survivors of Child Abuse (Soca), said the Vatican team's presence is a welcome development. Bless you, Patrick. You are probably the first victim I have read about who has acknowledged that the Vatican is doing something right!]

Walsh said: "In March this year, we handed Cardinal Sean Brady [the leader of Ireland's Catholics] a letter to the Pope asking for Rome to come in and examine the entire Church in Ireland. Now that is exactly what is going to happen, we are certain this delegation from the Vatican will meet us and other survivors' groups.

"Irish Soca and other survivors' groups are excited over the apostolic visitation because it's the end of allowing the Irish hierarchy to handle the scandal and crises on their own. They are no longer being allowed to clean up their own mess or, to be more accurate, sweep it under the carpet."

Gary O'Sullivan, editor of the Irish Catholic, said Ireland had not seen such a high-powered delegation, some of whom are in line to become cardinals, since the Norman conquest.

"This is a very high-powered group of Vatican officials who are coming here to look over the workings of the church. You can compare it to top people in, say, IBM's global headquarters coming over to a country where one of its branches is based to sort out some problems there."

One of Ireland's most famous priests, the broadcaster and writer Father Brian D'Arcy, also welcomed the Vatican inquiry but said he hoped its purpose was not to impose hardline theology on the Irish church.

"If the apostolic visitation deals with the big issues such as celibacy, the structures of the church, the need to get the laity more involved in decision making, then they will be doing their job. It would be worrying if their visit to Ireland was just to reinforce Vatican authority." [D'Arcy is too quick to interject his own ideological causes! His concerns are not the purpose of these visitations - which intend primarily to establish responsibility and examine why neglect of the problem and inaction or cover-up by some bishops took place, in order to recommend ways to make sure that henceforth, local churches will be more vigilant, attentive and wise regarding priestly discipline and diocesan responsbilities for this.]

Cardinal Brady is among the clerics under pressure ahead of the Vatican delegation's arrival, after revelations earlier this year that he had kept quiet for more than a decade despite knowing about sexual abuse carried out by the late Father Brendan Smyth. [A habitually overblown misrepresentation by now of Brady's actual 'offense'!]

Despite the bitterness and hurt among survivors of clerical child abuse in Ireland, Soca has called for Pope Benedict's visit to be treated with respect.

Walsh said: "This is a celebration for English and Scottish Catholics and we would urge everyone to allow them to enjoy the pope's visit, to respect people over in Britain who have nothing to do with what happened to us at the hands of religious orders and the Irish state." [Mr. Walsh, you are a fair man and a good Christian! May your tribe increase!]

The current anger in Ireland towards the Catholic Church is in sharp contrast to the joy and fervour that surrounded its last papal visit in 1979. [IMore to the point, it was also the first ever papal visit to Ireland.] Almost a quarter of the country's population turned out to see Pope John Paul II at several outdoor "monster masses" in Dublin, Drogheda and the west of Ireland.