Smears grow as Cardinal questioned
There is one place in Belgium where Cardinal Godfried Danneels can still feel appreciated: inside the Sint-Salvator Cathedral in Bruges, where last Saturday the Cardinal, formerly the primate of the Catholic Church in Belgium, was given a standing ovation by a congregation come to witness the installation of Jozef De Kesel as the new bishop of Bruges.
Conspiracy theorists gear up
De Kesel replaces the disgraced Roger Vangheluwe, who resigned after admitting he had sexually abused a family member over a period of years. That blow is still felt among the faithful in Bruges, but their shock has since spread to the rest of the Catholic congregation in Belgium, thanks to growing concern that the Cardinal himself may have knowingly covered up cases of sex abuse by clergy.
Last week Cardinal Danneels, by prior arrangement, was brought to the prosecutor’s office in Brussels for questioning on what he knew about cases of abuse and when he knew it.
A commission set up by the Church to look into abuse allegations amassed, before it was closed down, a pile of some 450 dossiers of abuse complaints. In many cases, victims alleged the Cardinal had been informed at the time or later. Danneels claims he never engaged in any sort of cover-up.
The purpose of last week’s questioning was to find a way through that apparent muddle. The Cardinal was questioned for ten hours in all. He was not accompanied by a lawyer, although he had initially asked if he might need one. He was being questioned, officially, as a witness, and not as a suspect in any sense. Nevertheless the length of the interrogation led to a feeling something more was going on, as did the fact that at one point he was placed in confrontation with child psychiatrist Peter Adriaenssens, who chaired the ill-fated commission, and who had personally taken testimony from abuse victims who claimed the Cardinal knew what was going on.
Anyone who was in Belgium in the years 1996-1998 will agree with justice minister Stefaan Declerck that “We are living through a period of catharsis just like the summer of Dutroux,” referring to the the hysteria surrounding the case of child rapist and killer Marc Dutroux and the events that followed Danneels’ questioning. First it was revealed that police had found a pornographic image of a child on the Cardinal’s computer. Then it was claimed he was also in possession of autopsy photos of two of Dutroux’s victims.
The two claims were intended to be damning evidence of collusion with abusers or worse. Neither turned out to hold any water. The “pornographic” image, in the first place, was in fact part of a series of photos entered by artist Laura Baudoux in the Canvascollectie art competition organised by the Flemish public broadcaster, and most likely came onto Danneels’ computer without his knowledge, simply as a result of his visiting their website.
The autopsy photos, meanwhile, were either sent to the archbishopric in Mechelen by the Vatican, which had received them from a now-defunct English magazine; or they had been sent (as the Church itself claimed) by one of a trio of eccentric conspiracy theorists who hover at the edges of the justice system and believe, for example, that Dutroux’s victims in fact died in the making of a snuff movie, at a shoot attended by 12 senior figures in the Belgian establishment.
How the Church (the images were not on Danneels’ own computer) came into possession of the files is of small importance, odd as it may sound, given that at the height of the Dutroux affair, the DVDs containing the case files were being widely circulated, even before the trial, among journalists, members of the white committees, and other interested parties. As the lawyer who defended Dutroux at his trial pointed out last week, it would be easier to draw up a list of people who did not at some time have possession of all or part of the Dutroux dossier – up to and including autopsy photos.
As the conspiracy hype grows, however, there was one new development which might be of concern: the prosecutor- general of Brussels, Marc de le Court, has asked the relevant judicial authorities to look into the investigation of magistrate Wim De Troy, which led to the search of the Mechelen archbishop’s palace and offices, and the seizure of two trucks worth of documents, computers and other possible evidence.
The a request is perfectly legal, if unusual at such an early stage in the proceedings and in the absence of any obvious signs of impropriety. But legal or not, it has aroused suspicion that one faction within the judicial system more sympathetic to the Church may be in conflict with another more secular-minded faction. There’s nothing concrete on which to base that belief, but this is Belgium, and as we’ve seen before, in Belgium, even a lack of evidence can be taken as proof of something.
