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BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Ultimo Aggiornamento: 23/08/2021 11:16
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27/06/2010 05:12
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So my initial outrage yesterday on reading about the police raids on the properties of the Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels was not uninformed, after all, that even Communist-era raids could not have been as bad!... BTW, still no outrage from Anglophone liberals!


Cardinal Bertone says manner
of Belgian raids unheard of
even in Communist regimes

Translated from

July 27, 2010


ROME - "The sequestration was a serious event, unheard of", said Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of State, commenting personally on the raid-and-search operations carried out by Belgian police in the Archdiocese of Machelen-Brussels on Thursday.


From left: St. Rombout's, the cathedral of Mechelen; police stand guard outside; other police have sniffing dogs; police guard outside the Archbishop's Palace during the ten-hour raid.

[Police entered the Archbishop's Palace around 10:30 a.m. as a meeting of the Belgian bishops' conference was getting under way. The bishops were detained, and their cell phones confiscated, until the police finished their search almost ten hours later. They also raided the office of a lay commission investigating complaints of sex abuse victims and took away all the confidential files, and they drilled into the tombs of two Brussels archbishops in the crypt of Mechelen Cathedral searching for hidden files. Apparently, all of that is legal in Belgium. How's that for a country that swaggers about its 'advanced state of enlightened secularism'?]

"There are no precedents for this, not even under the Communist regimes", Bertone noted. He reiterated the Church's 'condemnation of pedophilia' but it was another matter "to detain the bishops for more than nine hours without allowing them to drink or eat".

Bertone spoke to newsmen at an international symposium of university professors at which he was a speaker.

He also commented on an ongoing industrial dispute, expressing the hope that the crisis at the Fiat plant in Pomigliano d'Arco could be resolved soon "with decisions in favor of the families, the workers and their total integral development".


Typically, Avvenire, the Italian bishops' newspaper, promptly published a strong editorial about the raids. And just as typically, Vian's Osservatore Romano did not, contenting itself with the brief comments made by Cardinal Bertone above :


An outrage that achieved nothing
- and reveals a lot about
Belgian authorities

by Marina Corradi
Translated from

July 26, 2010


A blitz in the crypt of a cathedral as if it were the heart of a criminal organization. To drill into the tombs of two cardinals, violate their resting place in search of secret dossiers - and of course, they found nothing. What happened in Mechelen on Thursday sounds like a Dan Brown film.

In the course of an investigation on complaints of pedophile crimes committed by some Belgian priests, a Belgian judge ordered bishops to be interrogated, files to be confiscated, and even the raid-and-search on the crypt of the 12th century cathedral, symbol of Brussels's twin city.

The legality of the investigation is not in question here, nor the need to arrive at the truth, to establish if crimes were committed and by whom. For months, the Pope has been calling for amends to make things right, to grant some justice and appropriate care to the victims.

But in the Thursday blitz and violation of the cardinals' tombs, we can read something that goes beyond the legitimate demands of justice.

Was it really necessary, as some even in the Belgian media have asked, to use pneumatic drills on the cardinals' tombs? In fact, does this assault not take on a symbolic value - clearly the wish to attack the Church in its entirety?

"Operation Church" is the name the Belgian prosecutors have given to their investigation, and it is significant. Because it clearly names the target. Not the individual offenders but 'the' Church.

The Operation is not really about the terrible and odious crimes committed by some of its ministers, but for what the Church itself represents, for what the Church is. In the attack on the tombs, one sees a redde rationem, a secular settling of accounts with the Church which continues to bring Christ to the world, Christ and his truth.

This, of course, especially in a secularized nation like Belgium, clashes openly with the dominant culture and its idol - the coddled 'I', free of every law that is not its own.

One cannot otherwise explain the brutality and the intended high visibility of the raids. The intention was to strike at the heart.

Churches have been assaulted through the centuries with other kinds of destruction. But in revolutions and tragedies that cannot be compared with this mini-blitz ordered by a municipal judge - a legal incursion, protected by search orders.

Nonetheless, to violate the tombs of long dead cardinals inside a cathedral - despite the chrism of the law on that search warrant - is exactly what it is, a violence.

Taking advantage of the tragic circumstances regarding pedophile abuses, the actions were meant to strike not at the culprits for those abuses, but at the Church itself.At the very heart and guts of one of the most resplendent cathedrals in Europe.

From a bird's-eye view, it appears like the center of a fine spider's web of homes, and stories, and men. Its colossal marble columns seem like the roots of the city, a sign in stone of the medieval Europeans coming together in communities and cities.

And that is why we feel the pain of this petty blitz unleashed by some unknown judge in a small city far from us. It was a way of telling the faithful that their common heart could well be the repository of shameful secrets. That had to be drilled through, inspected by digital cameras to seek these secrets out.

Even if they found nothing, the sense of their profanation remains, and even perhaps, the doubts they have sown - exactly as though they wished to poison the roots of the city and its people.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/06/2010 12:51]
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