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4 Jun 2011

Belgian Bishops finally agree to compensate some clergy abuse survivors but advocates deride words without action





The Olympian - Olympia, Washington May 30, 2011

Belgian church to pay victims for abuse

By RAF CASERT and DON MELVIN | Associated Press



BRUSSELS – The Belgian church says it is willing to pay compensation to victims of sexual abuse by clergy to help those abused restore their dignity.

Belgium's bishops and religious leaders said in a statement Monday they are "deeply touched and distraught" by revelations over the past year, when over 500 witnesses have come forward with harrowing accounts of molestation in the country by Catholic clergy spanning decades.

But the leader of a group of survivors said she would put her faith only in actions, not in anything the bishops said

"Whatever the bishops are saying is blah, blah," said Lieve Halsberghe, the leader in Belgium of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. "We need to see action before we believe anything they say."

The decision follows months of wavering and deliberations within the church on how to best deal with the crisis, which has shaken the institution to its core.

The religious leaders said in a statement that the abuse had "given the victims great suffering and left traumas, which often lasted for many years."

They said they regretted the suffering and trauma "wholeheartedly" and "appreciated the courage of the victims to come forward with the painful facts."

For years, victims organizations had complained that the religious leadership totally ignored their pleas and protected abusing priests by simply moving them from parish to parish instead of punishing them.

A parliamentary inquiry committee set up in the wake of the scandal heard church officials acknowledge that they often were aloof to abuse problems and the needs of the victims.

The church officials said that in the wake of the inquiry they had agreed to enter arbitrage to consider compensation in cases where the legal time limit for filing suit has expired. Compensation would be agreed on a case-by-case basis.

They also vowed it would never happen again.

"The bishops and religious leaders are unanimous and steadfast to do all possible to make sure such serious facts, which society rightly deplores, never happen again," the statement said.

Halsberghe greeted that statement with derision, saying the abuse may be continuing today. She said her group is working on the cases of priests who have been abusing for four or five decades, yet continue to be allowed by the church to take care of "minors in precarious situations - poor, with no power."

"The bishops know that the justice system in Belgium is weak, the judiciary is very weak, and they are trying to hide behind it," she said.

The statement by the religious leaders said they want to "help victims restore their dignity and, according to their needs, provide financial help."

A former Belgian bishop at the center of one of the Roman Catholic church's biggest pedophile scandals said last month that he had abused two nephews and insisted he had no plans to abandon the priesthood.

Former bishop Roger Vangheluwe called 13 years of sexual abuse of one nephew which started at age 5 as no more than "a little piece of intimacy." He said the abuse of a second nephew was very short.

Vangheluwe said last month he fully realized what he did was wrong, and often went to confession about it. The 74-year-old Vangheluwe resigned a year ago, just as the sex abuse scandal was spreading across Europe.

The church long pleaded for time to set up a system to punish all abusers and provide some measure of relief for victims.

But Halsberghe said she feared any compensation might come only in exchange for an agreement to keep quiet, saying past payoffs had carried confidentiality agreements.

"I think this is a cruel thing, and absolutely against human rights," she said. "Survivors need to talk to heal. You cannot heal without talking."


This article was found at:



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7 comments:

  1. Perry Bulwer17 January 2012 at 11:05

    Belgian authorities raid 3 bishops' offices

    By RAF CASERT, AP Jan 16, 2012

    Belgian authorities on Monday raided three bishops' administrative offices as an official said investigators were nearing the end of a two-year probe into whether church officials protected child abusers at the expense of their victims.

    Belgian Catholic Church spokesman Geert Lesage said the offices in the Hasselt, Mechelen and Antwerp cooperated during the raids and handed over requested files as much as possible.

    A judicial official close to the investigation, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Monday's surprise raids were based on some 200 witness accounts and 87 civil claims and sought to reveal if high-level clergy were involved in keeping abuse covered up.

    Over the past two years, more than 500 witnesses have come forward with accounts of molestation by Catholic clergy in Belgium over several decades. One bishop was forced to resign in 2010 after he admitted he abused a nephew.

    The main part of the investigation centers on "the non-assistance to people in danger and is targeted at people higher up in the hierarchy," the official said. "Possibly, we will be able to charge people." The official would not expand on who in the church hierarchy could potentially be charged.

    "Today we saw the start of the final phase of Operation Chalice," the official said, using the investigation's code name. The official said the next step would likely be in a couple of months.

    Tommy Scholtes, the spokesman for the Belgian bishop's conference said, "it is up to the judicial authorities to find out whether there has been negligence."

    Church officials in both Mechelen and Hasselt said that several files taken Monday centered on the 1960s and 1970s. The cases are past the statute of limitation, but could still be used to show "non-assistance to people in danger," said Jeroen Moens, a spokesman for the Mechelen Bishops' office.

    A tally of the raids showed that some two dozen files were collected from the three offices based on individual cases, reports of meetings between high clergy and victims and exchanges of letters.

    The Belgian church is also leading an investigation into the allegations.

    The raids were the first in "Operation Chalice" since June 2010, when authorities seized hundreds of case files from a church and used power tools to open a prelate's crypt in Mechelen's St. Rumbold Cathedral seeking evidence. Pope Benedict XVI called the raids "deplorable" at the time.

    That raid was declared excessive by a Belgian court and based on premises that were too vague. But the government said the investigation could continue if the inquiry respects legal rules.

    The judicial official stressed that "the context was totally different this time around."

    In Hasselt, the files of four cases were taken, but church officials were allowed to take a copy first, said Clem Vande Broek, a spokesman for the Hasselt bishop's office. He said two of the cases dated from over 40 years back while the suspects involved had already died and were already known to judicial authorities.

    "The whole procedure was correctly dealt with," said Vande Broek.

    The judicial official said that copies were always allowed to be taken to allow the church to continue its own investigation.

    The scandal has had a huge impact on the Belgian church and has highlighted the issue of sex abuse, which has undermined the church's credibility in many Western nations. Revelations of rape or other sexual abuse of minors by priests, and of cover-ups by bishops, piled up for months.

    [...]

    read the full article at:

    http://www.newser.com/article/d9sa6ilg0/belgian-authorities-raid-3-bishops-offices-as-abuse-investigation-moves-toward-end.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Perry Bulwer20 January 2012 at 12:47

    Belgian police in hot pursuit of Church child sex cover-up

    expatica.com January 18, 2012

    Belgian magistrates have re-launched a high-profile probe into child sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, this time seeking to show the Church hierarchy engaged in a cover-up.

    Federal police pounced Wednesday on "personal files" held by senior Church figures in the dioceses of Liege, Namur and Tournai after hitting Antwerp, Bruges, Ghent, Hasselt and Mechelen since Monday.

    The seizures are based on testimony from some 200 alleged victims and in 87 judicial complaints.

    Federal magistrate and spokeswoman for national prosecutors Lieve Pellens said the purpose of this new "key phase" in a Belgian investigation is different from that of dramatic June 2010 raids on Church headquarters that angered Pope Benedict XVI.

    Truckloads of evidence gathered then has been ruled inadmissible by Belgian courts following Church challenges over police methods, but now magistrate Wim De Troy is focusing on a search for proof of "culpable negligence" by the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

    After similar scandals in the United States, Ireland and Germany, Belgium was rocked in April 2010 with revelations that the then bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, had abused a nephew for 13 years.

    Forced to resign over the scandal, he was subsequently placed in seclusion in a French abbey but vanished from view last year after rendering the Vatican "stupefied" when he went on television to announce he had also abused a second family member.

    According to Dutch-language daily De Standaard, magistrates are focused on Vangheluwe's case. He cannot be charged with abuse because the acts he has admitted to carrying out on his nephews go too far back under Belgian prosecution law.
    However, the newspaper has reported that until recently Vangheluwe protected priests in his diocese from similar allegations, sending money to one victim and threatening "consequences" if the pay-off came out. In this instance, it was a question of a female allegedly abused from the age of 16.

    Vangheluwe's case opened a floodgate, with a Church-backed report more than a year ago revealing almost 500 cases of alleged abuse of boys, girls and adults in Catholic institutions since the 1950s, including 13 known suicides by victims.

    The Belgian Roman Catholic Church sought to turn the page last week by saying new confidential channels for victims would result in all cases of sexual abuse being transferred systematically to judicial authorities.

    In December last year, the Church also committed to providing compensation of between 2,500 euros ($3,200) and 25,000 euros to victims for whom the legal deadline for prosecution of aggressors has expired.

    Church lawyer Fernand Keuleneer has queried the sense of these latest investigations, arguing that there is "no longer any doubt" that the Church is cooperating on the issue.

    In an interview with a French-language daily, La Libre Belgique, the lawyer said the Church has "clearly admitted" that past systems were "neither appropriate nor effective" to fight against sexual abuse.

    However, he also argued: "It is another thing to want to show that there was non-assistance to persons in danger."
    But Christine Mussche, a lawyer for around 100 alleged victims, told AFP that the new police probes are "absolutely necessary." She alleged the Church has "done everything to try to halt De Troy's probe."

    http://www.expatica.com/be/news/belgian-news/belgian-police-in-hot-pursuit-of-church-child-sex-cover-up_202032.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. Perry Bulwer17 May 2013 at 15:33

    Belgian Church reveals 300 new child sex abuse complaints

    AFP , May 16, 2013

    BRUSSELS, Belgium - The Belgian Roman Catholic Church said Wednesday it had received more than 300 complaints of sexual abuse of minors in 2012.

    Three quarters of the 307 dossiers opened were in northern Flanders, the staunchly Catholic Dutch-speaking and larger half of Belgium.

    The great majority of complainants were mature adults, having waited before coming forward after the Church fell into scandal over recent years and with compensation now an issue.

    Forty-six of the cases raised last year have gone forward for mediation, officials behind the abuse census said.

    After similar scandals in the United States, Ireland and Germany, Belgium was rocked in April 2010 with revelations that the then bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, had abused a nephew for 13 years.

    Vangheluwe's subsequent decision to quit opened a floodgate of allegations, with one report revealing almost 500 cases of abuse in Catholic institutions since the 1950s, including 13 known suicides by victims.

    In September 2011 some 70 alleged victims filed joint legal action against the Belgian Church and the Holy See, the first such class action suit in Belgium and the first such suit involving the Vatican in Europe.

    http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest+News/World/Story/A1Story20130516-423028.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. Perry Bulwer1 October 2024 at 12:02

    Catholic Belgian university ‘deplores’ comments by Pope Francis moments after speech

    UCLouvain staff and students express ‘incomprehension and disapproval’ over pope’s views on role of women

    The Guardian staff and agencies September 29, 2024

    Pope Francis has been sharply criticised by one of Belgium’s Catholic universities over his stance on the role of women in society, in a strongly worded press release issued just moments after the pontiff spoke at the college.

    Professors and students at UCLouvain, where the 87-year-old pontiff had made a speech on Saturday afternoon, said they wanted to express their “incomprehension and disapproval” about the pope’s views.

    “UCLouvain deplores the conservative positions expressed by Pope Francis on the role of women in society,” said the statement, in extraordinary language from a Catholic university about a pope.

    Francis went to the university on Saturday to celebrate its upcoming 600th anniversary as part of a weekend trip he is making to Belgium. His speech largely called for global action on climate change, but he also responded to a letter to him from students and professors that had asked about the Catholic church’s teaching on women.

    In the letter, which was read out loud to him, the students questioned him on the Church’s historical part in entrenching female subservience, the unfair division of labour and even disproportionate female poverty.

    “Throughout the history of the Church, women have been made invisible,” the letter read. “What place, then, for women in the Church?”

    Francis replied by saying the Church was female, noting that the Italian word for it, “chiesa”, is a feminine noun.

    “A woman within the People of God is a daughter, a sister, a mother,” he said, adding “womanhood speaks to us of fruitful welcome, nurturing and life-giving dedication”.

    He did not give any details about potential plans for reform.

    The university statement called the pope’s position on women’s roles in society “deterministic and reductive”.

    “We are really shocked,” said Valentine Hendrix, a 22-year-old student. “He reduces us to a role of childbearer, mother, wife, everything we want to emancipate ourselves from.”

    Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a climatologist at UCLouvain university, said Francis had “failed to rise to the occasion.”

    “To reply that the Church is a woman is really missing the point of the question – about the Church’s respect for women and their role in the institution and in society,” he said.

    continued below

    ReplyDelete
  5. Perry Bulwer1 October 2024 at 12:03

    Earlier the pope visited the tomb of Belgium’s King Baudouin who in 1990 famously refused to sign a law lifting penalties against abortion, citing personal convictions.

    Francis described the legislation – passed after the king temporarily renounced his functions to avoid having to endorse it – as “a murderous law”.

    Francis has faced criticism during events throughout his trip to Belgium. The country’s king and prime minister called on the pope to take more concrete actions to help survivors of abuse by Catholic clergy, and a rector at a different Catholic university asked him to reconsider the Catholic church’s ban on ordaining women as priests.

    UCLouvain is a French-speaking university in Belgium. It has 38,000 students studying across 20 faculties.

    The Catholic church has an all-male clergy. Francis has created two commissions to consider whether women could serve as deacons, who, like priests, are ordained, but cannot celebrate Mass, but has not moved forward on the issue.

    However, during his 11 years as pontiff, Francis has also changed the Vatican’s primary governing document to allow women to lead departments, and has also allowed women to vote at major global meetings of bishops, known as synods, for the first time.

    The pope’s three-day Belgium visit has been dominated by the Church’s dark legacy of child sexual abuse, and saw him meet on Friday with 17 victims.

    The group shared their stories and expressed their expectations to the pope, who “took note” of their requests, according to the Vatican.

    Belgium has been rocked by decades of abuse scandals and cover-ups and a hard-hitting documentary last year put the issue back on front pages, prompting new victims to come forward.

    In an open letter this month, some had demanded the pontiff address paedophilia and set up a process for financial reparations.

    On Saturday morning, during a gathering with clergy and pastoral workers at the vast Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Brussels, Francis was pressed on the issue for a second day running.

    Replying to a question by a representative of an organisation helping abuse victims, the pontiff acknowledged the “atrocious suffering and wounds” caused by the Church.

    “There is a need for a great deal of mercy to keep us from hardening our hearts before the suffering of victims, so that we can help them feel our closeness,” Francis said.

    Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

    to see the links and video embedded in this article go to:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/29/catholic-belgian-university-deplores-comments-by-pope-francis-moments-after-speech

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  6. Perry Bulwer3 October 2024 at 14:13

    Pope ends troubled Belgium visit by doubling down on abortion and women and praising abuse victims

    Francis used his only Mass in Belgium to publicly demand that priests who abuse young people be punished, and that the church hierarchy stop covering up their crimes. He praised the courage of victims who came forward about their abuse in improvised remarks to a crowd of some 30,000 at Brussels’ King Baudouin stadium.

    by Nicole Winfield, Associated Press October 1, 2024

    ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Francis wrapped up a troubled visit to Belgium on Sunday by doubling down on his traditional views on women and abortion and demanding that Catholic bishops stop covering up for predator priests — a scandal that has devastated the church’s credibility around the globe.

    Francis revisited the key thorny topics of his trip to Belgium during his in-flight news conference coming home, praising Belgium’s late King Baudouin as a “saint” for having abdicated for a day in 1990 rather than sign legislation legalizing abortion.

    “You need a politician who wears pants to do this,” Francis said, using a Spanish expression. “You need courage,” he said, adding that Baudouin’s beatification process was moving along.

    Francis drew criticism from some in Belgium for having prayed at Baudouin’s tomb and for calling the abortion law “homicidal,” given that abortion remains a political issue in Belgium, with new proposals to extend the legal limit on an abortion from 12 to 18 weeks.

    “Doctors who do this are — allow me the word — hitmen. They are hitmen,” Francis said. “And on this you cannot argue. You are killing a human life.”

    It was the second time in as many weeks that Francis has been asked about his views on abortion during an in-flight news conference. Returning from Asia earlier this month and asked about the upcoming U.S. election, Francis said voters should chose the “lesser evil” when picking between a candidate who wants to deport migrants and one who supports abortion rights — a reference to Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

    Francis calls for action on church abuse

    Francis used his only Mass in Belgium to publicly demand that priests who abuse young people be punished, and that the church hierarchy stop covering up their crimes. He praised the courage of victims who came forward about their abuse in improvised remarks to a crowd of some 30,000 at Brussels’ King Baudouin stadium.

    “Evil must not be hidden. Evil must be brought out into the open,” Francis said to repeated rounds of applause as the crowd took in what he was saying.

    Francis deviated from his prepared homily Sunday to respond to the meeting he held with 17 abuse survivors on Friday night, where he heard first-hand of the trauma and suffering they endured and the tone-deaf response of the church when they reported the crimes.

    Belgium has had a wretched legacy of abuse and cover-up, none more symbolic of the church’s hypocrisy than the case of Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe. He was allowed to quietly retire in 2010 after he admitted that he had sexually abused his nephew for 13 years.

    Francis only defrocked him this year — 14 years later — in a move clearly seen as finally dealing with a problem before his arrival in Belgium.

    The victims gave Francis a letter with several requests, including establishing a universal church system of reparations since many say the financial settlements they have received from the church don’t even cover the costs of therapy many require.

    continued below

    ReplyDelete
  7. Perry Bulwer3 October 2024 at 14:14

    Francis praised the victims’ courage and acknowledged that the settlements many have received in civil judgements — which he said he believed were capped at 50,000 euros — were not enough.

    “We have the responsibility to help the abused and take care of them,” he said. “Some need psychological help: (We must) help them with this.”

    Criticism of Francis and calls for church reform in Belgium

    Francis’ visit to Belgium was always going to be difficult, given the country’s history of clerical sexual abuse and overall secularizing trends which have emptied its majestic cathedrals and churches.

    But it’s unclear if he or his entourage expected such sharp public expressions of outrage or the pointed calls for reform from Belgium’s intellectual elite.

    The main reason for the trip was to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the Leuven/Louvain Catholic University, the oldest Catholic university in the world and long the Vatican’s academic fiefdom in Belgium.

    But the rector of the Dutch-speaking campus told Francis that the abuse scandal had so harmed the church’s moral authority that it would do best to reform if it wants to regain credibility and relevance. Luc Sels suggested that opening up greater roles for women — including the priesthood — and being more welcoming to LGBTQ+ Catholics would be a good place to start.

    Francis heard a similar call from the French-speaking campus, where students staged a reading of an articulated critique of his landmark environmental encyclical “Praised Be” in which they called for a “paradigm shift” in the way the church views women.

    They noted that the encyclical virtually ignores women, cites no female theologians and contributes to women’s “invisibility” in the church and society. Women have long complained they have a second-class status in the church, barred from the priesthood and positions of power despite doing the lion’s share of the work educating the young, caring for the sick and passing on the faith.

    Francis, an 87-year-old Argentine Jesuit, said he liked what they said. But he repeated his frequent refrain about women being the “fertile” nurturers who complement men, and that regardless “the church is woman.”

    His words drew a remarkable rebuke from the Catholic university that invited him. As soon as he finished speaking, Louvain issued a statement expressing its “incomprehension and disapproval” of his views on women, which it said were “deterministic and reductive.”

    “We cannot agree on his position for sure,” said rector Françoise Smets. “We are fighting against discrimination for women, and we would like women to have another role in the society and in the church also.”

    During the in-flight news conference, Francis doubled down on women and criticized the Louvain students for what he said was a “pre-made” communique, which was distributed as soon as his remarks finished.

    Francis has insisted that women’s focus on ordained ministry was misplaced given his claims that they already are more important than men.

    “I always speak about the dignity of women, and I said something that I can’t say about men: The church is woman,” Francis said. “Women are more important than men because the church is woman.”

    to see the links embedded in this article go to:

    https://religionnews.com/2024/10/01/pope-ends-troubled-belgium-visit-by-doubling-down-on-abortion-and-women-and-praising-abuse-victims/

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