At the same time, search warrants was also carried out at the Sint- Rombout cathedral in the city and in the offices of the commission set up by the church to look into abuse complaints, located in Leuven. More than 450 case files were seized.

The raids provoked immediate criticism from the church; from Peter Adriaenssens, the respected child psychiatrist who chairs the commission; and from the Pope himself. On Monday this week, Adriaenssens announced that he would not continue in his post.

The Mechelen raid took place just as the country’s bishops had gathered for a meeting with the Papal nuncio, although the Brussels prosecutor’s office, who carried out the raid with police assistance, said this was a coincidence. Cardinal Danneels was brought from his nearby residence to join the gathering; all those present were detained and had their mobile phones removed.

Archbishop André Leonard, who took over as head of the Belgian church from Danneels and who was also present in Mechelen, later played down the church’s shock at the raids: “The detectives were doing their job. It’s not for me to say what the justice system can and cannot do. I don’t want to give the impression that we think the church is above the law.”

According to the archbishop, the police visit came as “a complete surprise. They came in and asked where we kept the paedophilia files. I had to disappoint them. There’s no such file cabinet. So they searched the whole building, from the cellar to the bathrooms, all the way up to the attic. They took away more or less everything.”

Among the items taken, which filled two trucks, were the personal computer of Cardinal Danneels, computers belonging to the administration of the archdiocese, CDs and DVDs, correspondence files, memory sticks and hard drives.

The seizure of case files from the commission offices in Leuven caused the eventual resignation of its chairman. The commission was set up by the church as an office for internal investigations, but it operated for a decade until 2008 with not a single case being referred to the justice system.

The majority of the 450 cases now open came to light after it was revealed that Roger Vangheluwe, then bishop of Bruges, had abused a family member for years. Adriaenssens expressed fears that potential further revelations would now be made impossible, as victims would be unwilling to now come forward knowing that any promise of confidentiality was meaningless. A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, however, promised that the confidentiality of victims was an important concern to the justice system as well as to the commission.

Police look in tombs for evidence

The Vatican lost no time in condemning what they called “the desecration” of the tombs of Cardinals Leo Jozef Suenens (1904-1996), Jozef Ernest Van Roey (1874-1961) and Desiré- Joseph Mercier (1851-1926).

Initial reports stated that he two tombs had been opened – fuelled by the appearance of police officers with crowbars and electric drills. But recent cement work around the plaque marking the burial place of Cardinal Mercier led to a metal plaque being displaced. The grave of Cardinal Suenens, meanwhile, which is behind a wooden door, was investigated using a camera passed into the space through a small hole drilled in the door.

The two graves were investigated, the prosecutor’s office said, as part of an overall decision to search the entire cathedral and leave no stone – and indeed no gravestone – unturned. Unofficially, investigators let it be known that they had received testimony that parts of the crypt had been used to hide some of the more damaging dossiers brought to the attention of church authorities over the years.

The cases of abuse that have so far come to light, including the case involving the former bishop of Bruges, all happened so long ago that a prosecution is no longer possible. However, if the prosecution can demonstrate a pattern over the years of the church failing to take action when cases were brought to its attention – such as calling the police – then each case could still be used to form a chain of evidence to prove a case of criminal conspiracy.

Investigators are now going to try to construct a case showing that in every situation where a priest was accused of sexual abuse, the church authorities did not bring the case to the attention of the judicial authorities.

The negative evidence is overwhelming: of all the cases brought before the church’s own commission from 1998 to 2008, not a single case was reported to the police. Of all the cases reported to retired priest Rik Devillé, who operated as a one-man crusade against child abuse by the clergy, not one was passed along to the police, though they were reported to church authorities.

In each case, the church will attempt to explain why reporting the incident was not considered an option. The prosecutor, in the meantime, will be looking for evidence that the church covered up the crimes.