A Belgian bishop resigned on Friday after admitting to abusing a young man decades ago.The resignation came one day after an Irish bishop was forced to step down for failing to report pedophile priests when he was in Dublin. Both men were made bishops – considered successors of the apostles in Catholic teaching – by Pope John Paul II. Pope Benedict accepted the resignation of Bishop Roger Joseph Vangheluwe of Bruges, Belgium, and Vangheluwe issued a statement saying he profoundly regretted what he had done to the young man, a minor at the time. “Over the course of these decades I have repeatedly recognized my guilt towards him and his family, and I have asked forgiveness,” the bishop’s statement said, “but this did not pacify him, and it did not pacify me.” Vangheluwe, 73, steps down two years before the normal resignation age of 75, admitting that the victim “is still marked by what happened.” The Archbishop of Brussels, Andre-Mutien Leonard, said that with the resignation, the Catholic Church wants to turn a new page “with respect to the not-so-distant period in which the Church, and others, preferred the solution of silence or concealment.” After two bishops stepping down this week, more could be on the way.
Other Irish bishops are expected to resign because of the scandal, and a German bishop has offered his resignation after admitting to physical, not sexual, abuse in an orphanage decades ago. While Benedict has found himself under fire for allegedly mishandling abuse cases, both as Archbishop of Munich and as a Vatican official, the bishops being forced to step down bring the scandal closer and closer to his predecessor.
Most of the bishops serving now were named during the 27-year papacy of John Paul II. Vangheluwe, for example, was made a bishop on 1984, six years into the papacy of John Paul II.
The Irish bishop who stepped down Thursday, James Moriarty, was also a John Paul II appointment, having been made a bishop in 1991.