This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
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 clarified the punishment Tuesday against former Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe after Belgian bishops reported during 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 that give 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.
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 bishops who molested minors or helped cover up crimes of priests who did. The change in the norms was designed to let the Congregation more easily go after abusive bishops and cardinals.
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 over 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, director for the U.S. victims' group Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests.
"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 Vatican's news office said Pope Benedict XVI would decide on a sentence based on Vangheluwe's diagnosis and prognosis from the psychological treatment he is receiving in exile, and he will 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.