A spokesman for Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Belgium said the transcript of a meeting in April with a victim of clerical sexual abuse has been taken out of context. “There was no intention of any cover-up,” said Toon Osaer, spokesman for the cardinal, who retired in January as archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels. “The cardinal [now] realizes he was rather naïve to think he could help the family in question reach a reconciliation,” he said. “At that moment, however, the family did not want to make public something they had kept secret for 24 years.” Belgium’s Flemish-language dailies, De Standaard and Het Nieuwsblad, published a transcript of the cardinal’s April meeting with relatives of the nephew of Bishop Roger Vangheluwe of Bruge [pictured]. The unnamed nephew had been abused between the ages of 5 and 18 by his uncle. Osaer said, “This was a totally confidential meeting, and the family intended to keep it all within the family,” the spokesman said. “This is why the cardinal tried to see if a reconciliation was possible.”
Cardinals Spokesman: No Coverup
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
Two new books give a subtle and multi-hued portrait of Seamus Heaney as he pursued a late-20th-century vocation as a public advocate of poetry and as a somewhat private advocate of Catholicism as a folk culture, if not a political one.
Athletes who never make mistakes, who never lose, do not exist. Champions are not perfectly functioning machines, but real men and women, who, when they fall, find the courage to get back on their feet.
In his video message at White Sox stadium, Pope Leo encouraged young people to look inside themselves, recognize God’s presence in their own hearts and “recognize that God is present and that, perhaps in many different ways, God is reaching out to you,
The June 14 celebration featured the first-ever airing of Pope Leo XIV’s video message to the world’s youth at the White Sox stadium in Chicago’s Southside.