He calls AIDS a form of "justice" for homosexuals and wants retired
pedophile priests to go unpunished. He says women who have an abortion
will be greeted in the afterlife by their unborn child crying "Momma!"
Archbishop
Andre Leonard, 70, was plucked from a sleepy Belgian citadel-town by
Pope Benedict XVI in January to energize the country's Roman Catholic
faithful and reverse 30 years of liberalism.
The appointment was in line
with Benedict's policy of putting tradition-minded and conservative
bishops in important dioceses.
But since taking office, Leonard's
hardline views have added turmoil to a church already mired in an abuse
scandal.
And, privately, some Vatican officials are expressing concern
about an ever-worsening public relations disaster.
The controversy
turned into a very public revolt last week when his spokesman resigned,
saying he could no longer morally defend Leonard.
"I was his GPS
for three months. But it is the driver who has his hands on the wheel.
Too often, I had to recalculate the route," said Juergen Mettepenningen.
He called Leonard a "loose cannon who thinks everybody else is wrong."
Leonard's
views — and the way he delivers them so stridently — are riling the
Catholic base, but they dovetail with church teachings that homosexual
acts are "intrinsically disordered" and that women who abort babies are
sinners.
Also, the Vatican admits it has no tolerance for
pedophiles, but rarely subjects elderly pedophile priests to full
canonical trials, instead telling them to live out their years in prayer
and penance.
Bert Claerhout, editor of Church and Life, a
Catholic weekly, says he has been receiving "fierce" letters of
complaint from readers — and doesn't believe Leonard's views have
suddenly come to the attention of the Vatican.
"The pope knew very
well what he did when he appointed Leonard. He wanted someone to bring a
conservative view to the church here," Claerhout said in an interview.
Two
of Belgium's 10 bishops have publicly challenged Leonard.
Unusually,
Belgian Premier Yves Leterme, a Catholic, also condemned him.
Last week,
a man ran up to the archbishop during a service at Brussels' main
cathedral and shoved a cherry pie in his face.
Leonard last week
published a five-page response to his critics, but refused to back off
from his view that AIDS is punishment for a promiscuous lifestyle.
Writing on his archdiocese's Web site, he drew parallels with people who
continue to smoke despite seeing clear health warnings on cigarette
packs.
Leonard took charge of the Belgian church just as a long-simmering sexual abuse scandal began to surface.
In
April, the then-Bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, retired and
admitted that for years he had abused a nephew.
In June, police raided
Leonard's offices looking for clues.
There is no suggestion Leonard is
involved in a coverup, but his subsequent defense of retired pedophile
priests couldn't have come at a more sensitive time.
"If they are
no longer priests, have no more (church) responsibilities, I doubt that
taking some kind of vengeance ... is a humane solution," he said on
Belgian public television in October.
"Do they really want a priest, aged 85, to be put in stocks and publicly humiliated? I think most victims don't want that."
Vatican
insiders call Leonard a "very intellectual" theologian. He escaped the
attention of most Belgian Catholics when, in the 1990s, he was the
bishop of Namur — a city of 100,000 in the country's thinly populated
south.
He holds a philosophy degree from the Leuven Catholic
University and did theological studies at the Pontifical Gregorian
University in Rome, a Jesuit school.
He was also a member of the
International Theological Commission, which then-Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — headed as prefect of the Vatican's
orthodoxy office.
He took over from Cardinal Godfried Danneels who
opposed key Vatican edicts such as a ban on condoms in AIDS prevention.
During his tenure, Belgium legalized euthanasia and same-sex marriages —
two red-flag issues in Rome — and Danneels didn't actively try to slow
down the pace of change.
Vatican officials acknowledge concern
about the Belgian situation, but have refrained from comment saying they
don't want to inflame an already tense situation.
Gabriel
Ringlet, a former deputy dean of the Universite Catholique de Louvain,
wants Leonard to resign — a highly unlikely prospect and one that would
be unprecedented in Belgium.
Rita Bettens, a churchgoing Catholic,
also said Leonard was causing considerable damage.
"And this is not a
good time for any of that," she said, referring to continuing fallout
from the abuse scandal.
SIC: AP/INT'L