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 case until the bishop involved resigned in 2011, a Church spokesman said on Saturday.
Jurgen Mettepenningen confirmed transcripts in Belgium’s De Standaard newspaper of a meeting Roman Catholic Cardinal Godfried Danneels held with Bishop Roger Vangheluwe and a sexual abuse victim of the bishop in April 2010.
“It is true this meeting and conversation took place, and that the transcript is correct,” Mettepenningen told Reuters.
Danneels’s spokesman Toon Osaer told Reuters the cardinal had not covered up anything and had openly spoken about the April 2010 meeting following Vangheluwe’s resignation two weeks after the conversation took place.
In the transcripts, published in De Standaard on Saturday, Danneels suggested the victim should make no public statement about the abuse until Vangheluwe retired the following year.
“It might be better to wait for a date in the next year, when he is due to resign,” Danneels told the victim, according to the transcripts.
He told the victim he believed a public announcement would not serve the interests of the victim or the bishop, the transcripts said.
“I don’t know if there will be much to gain from making a lot of noise about this, neither for you nor for him.”
Vangheluwe resigned after admitting having abused the victim for a number of years, both as a priest and a bishop.
Perhaps this is yet another example of the jackassiness of males.
I wonder whether the whole visible edifice of Church authority (not petrine or apostolic succession per se, but the way ecclesial governace is structured and exercised) has to collapse before management finally “gets it”.
An article by John Allen in the NCR regarding a recently published book (Italian) on Benedict’s papacy is revealing with regards to the fellows on top. Revealing and depressing. I’m almost ready to give a $100 to someone to start a persecution.
When is going to stop?