A year after his resignation plunged Belgium’s Roman Catholic Church into a crisis, the former bishop of Bruges provoked almost universal condemnation on Friday, this time by admitting that he had abused a second nephew – and insisting that he was not a pedophile.
In a television interview late Thursday that reopened deep wounds, the bishop, Roger Vangheluwe, 74, recounted with apparent lack of contrition events leading up to his resignation as bishop of Bruges last year, when it emerged that nearly 25 years ago he had abused a boy who was later revealed to be one of his nephews.
Those revelations prompted hundreds of people to come forward, claiming that they, too, had been victims of priests, and forced Belgium’s Roman Catholic Church into its deepest crisis of recent times.
In a broadcast from a location in France, Bishop Vangheluwe, dressed in an open-neck shirt, suggested that the 13-year relationship revealed last year had not been opposed by his nephew, and, in an unexpected new twist, he admitted having abused a second nephew for a much shorter period…
Bishop Vangheluwe is not facing criminal charges because of Belgium’s 10-year statute of limitations, and the Vatican says he is receiving “spiritual and psychological treatment” outside Belgium…
During the interview, to which Bishop Vangheluwe had agreed only on the condition that it would be broadcast live, he denied that he had been driven by sexual motives…the abuse had been restricted to the touching of genitals…
Um, the Pope said – well, the Pope said nothing. When the abuse became public he condemned the police for searching church property and took the Bishop’s fate into his own hands. Since then – the Pope said nothing.