Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

The pedophile bishop may have read the New York Times ad, or perhaps the Vatican has put out talking points:

Vangheluwe complained in the hour-long VT4 interview that the church was targeted in abuse probes, and that other sectors like sports organisations were let off too easily.

“Why is it different for priests than for other situations. [...]

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A friend of mine many years ago knew a priest who was accused of sexual abuse. The priest   denied it with tears, saying it was all a fabrication. My friend believed him and hired the best defense lawyer in town and got the priest off.
 
Then the priest was accused again.
 
My friend asked him, “What gives?”
 
The [...]

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 In the movie Napoleon, Wellington has strictly forbidden his soldiers to loot on pain of death. He comes across a soldier with a chicken under his shirt. The soldier tries to come up with a convincing explanation of why there is a chicken under his shirt. Wellington turns to his aide and tells him to [...]

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Because the reporting on the Vangheluwe - Danneels case is in Dutch, much of the information is difficult to access. 
One important piece of background has recently surfaced. Tom Heneghan of Reuters wrote to Austen Ivereigh at America:

 What is not said in the transcripts but was reported in the other paper running the transcripts (Het Nieuwsblad) [...]

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Tom Roberts at the National Catholic Reporter reflects on the failure of the hierarchy:
Danneels was generally seen as one of the last of the Vatican II generation who knew that council intimately and supported its reforms. He would be, for lack of a better term, a liberal by many of today’s ecclesiastical measures. But it [...]

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Roger Vangheluwe was a priest when he began sexually abusing his five-year-old nephew. The abuse continued even after 1984, when Vangheluwe, at age 48, became bishop of Bruges. 
The boy’s family pressured the boy to remain silent to preserve the bishop’s career. The bishop gave the family money (source of money unspecified). As he grew up, [...]

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In April 2010, eight years after Boston exploded with the news about pedophile cover-ups, Cardinal Danneels, the great progressive hero in the Church, continued the policy of hushing things up. Reuters reports:

The former head of Belgium’s Catholic Church suggested to a sexual abuse victim it would be better to delay a public statement on the [...]

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Der Spiegel recaps the events in Belgium. Cardinal Danneels can’t imagine why anyone thinks he didn’t act properly in handling allegations of sexual abuse. But 

A few days after the police raids in Mechelen, a dozen men gathered on the steps of the cathedral in Brussels. Ten years ago, on Jan. 25, 2000, they said, they [...]

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Catholic Church Conservation has the English translation of an article on the legal liability of
Cardinal Danneels: 

What is the situation of Danneels in criminal law? Can he be prosecuted? And when would that be? How can he defend himself? All at a glance:
 
* If Danneels was aware of a crime he had not reported to the [...]

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Marc Dutroux

 
Cardinal Godfried Daneels
 
When they searched retired Cardinal Danneels’ residence, Belgian police discovered confidential court records on the Dutroux murder-pedophile case. Church officials claim to be completely unaware of the existence of such files.The files contain hundreds of pictures of the corpses of the murdered girls and of the cells in which they were kept. [...]

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