Vatican sanctions bishop who abused nephew

VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican has ordered a Belgian bishop who resigned last year after admitting he had sexually abused his nephew to no longer act as a priest in public and warned that he may risk further church sanctions.

The Vatican on Tuesday clarified the punishment against the former Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe after Belgian bishops reported over the weekend that he had merely been sent outside Belgium for spiritual and psychological counseling, a seemingly cushy punishment given the seriousness of the crime.

The decision was the first known application of the Vatican's new sex abuse norms approved last year giving the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith jurisdiction to investigate and punish bishops -- not just priests -- who abuse minors. The ultimate possible penalty: defrocking, or laicization in church-speak.

Previously, when bishops committed canonical crimes the pope dealt with them by delegating the cases to various Vatican offices or the Roman Rota, a Vatican court.

The Vatican has long been accused by sex abuse victims of having let off the hook those bishops who themselves molested minors or helped cover up the crimes of priests who did. The change in the norms was designed at least in theory to let the Congregation more easily go after abusive bishops and cardinals.

Remaining at risk

Victims' advocates, however, said children will remain at risk as long as the Vatican declines to go after bishops who allowed the abuse to continue by moving pedophile priests around from parish to parish rather than turning them to police.

"The single most effective step the pope could take to protect kids is to clearly, strongly and publicly discipline church officials who ignore or conceal child sex crimes," said David Clohessy, national director for the U.S. victims' group Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.

"If the pope can't ever bring himself to say 'this man is being demoted because he enabled pedophile priests to hurt kids,' then there's little real chance for internal reform."

The pope has the final say on Vangheluwe's punishment.

In a statement issued after queries by The Associated Press, the Vatican's press office said Pope Benedict XVI would eventually decide on a sentence based on Vangheluwe's diagnosis and prognosis from the psychological treatment he is receiving in exile, and also take into account "the suffering of the victims and the need for justice."

It said that while Vangheluwe is being treated, he isn't allowed to work publicly as a priest or bishop.

Vangheluwe, 74, resigned a year ago this month as Belgium's longest-serving bishop after admitting he had abused a boy for years as a priest and even after becoming a bishop in 1984. It later was established that the victim, who is now in his early 40s, was his nephew.

Revelations of Vangheluwe's abuse came amid the 2010 global eruption of the sex abuse scandal, when thousands of people came forward in Europe and beyond with reports of priests who had abused them, bishops who covered up for the prelates and Vatican officials who ignored the crimes for decades.

The crisis was particularly acute in Belgium, where in the weeks following Vangheluwe's resignation a church-appointed commission reported that hundreds of people had come forward with tales of abuse that had led to at least 13 suicides.

The revelations prompted Belgian police to raid the home and offices of Belgium's former top churchmen, Cardinal Godfried Danneels, and open the tombs of two archbishops north of Brussels in a search for hidden documents -- moves that drew the stern condemnation of the Vatican.

The decision by the Congregation to go after Vangheluwe and prosecute bishops for canonical abuse crimes comes as criminal prosecutors are for the first time targeting bishops and high-ranking churchmen for sex-abuse related crimes and cover-ups.

Philadelphia has been rocked by the indictment of a high-ranking church official on child-endangerment charges for having moved known abusers around. Monsignor William Lynn, the former secretary for clergy in the Philadelphia archdiocese, faces up to 28 years in prison if convicted. His defense lawyers have said Lynn didn't have any children under his care and never thought any children were being put at risk.

And next month, a federal court in Ottawa is due to put Bishop Raymond Lahey on trial on child pornography charges. Lahey resigned as bishop of Antigonish, Nova Scotia in 2009, after authorities conducting a random search of his laptop computer at Ottawa's airport said they found child pornography.

Vatican officials said the Congregation is awaiting the results of the Ottawa trial before proceeding with its own case against Lahey. Under the same May 2010 revision of the Vatican's sex abuse norms, acquiring, possessing and distributing pornography of children under age 14 years is considered to be an equally serious canonical crime that is dealt with by the Congregation.

There are several other bishops in the United States and Europe who have resigned in recent years after they were accused of abuse, including Norwegian Bishop Georg Mueller, whose 2009 resignation was made public during the height of last year's scandal.

Beyond Lahey, Vatican officials declined to say which other bishops might come before the Congregation for abuse-related canonical punishments.

One of the highest-ranking churchmen to resign because he himself was an abuser was the late Austrian Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer. He was forced to resign as archbishop of Vienna in 1995 over claims he had molested youths at a monastery in the 1970s.