The former head of Belgium's Roman Catholic Church said Tuesday that
top bishops did not "consciously" cover up a child sex abuse scandal
going back decades.
Cardinal Godfried Danneels spent four hours being quizzed by Belgian
lawmakers at a hearing into the scandal of nearly 500 cases of abuse by
priests and church workers since the 1950s, including 13 victims who
committed suicide.
Expressing his "horror" at the revelations produced by a
church-backed commission this year, Danneels, the church's chief between
1979 and 2009, said "there was no drive to consciously cover up the
sexual abuse or deny it."
The 77-year-old said he wanted to "explicitly acknowledge and express
very clearly my horror for what (the victims) endured at the hands of
servants of the church."
He said perpetrators should "pay damages as established by justice" but refused to say if the church itself should pay victims.
"This decision will be taken in the coming weeks by the conference of bishops, of which I am no longer a member," he said.
Danneels' successor, Andre-Joseph Leonard, will appear before
lawmakers on Wednesday, the same day a court is expected to decide if
truckloads of evidence seized by police in spectacular raids on the
Belgian Catholic Church HQ are admissible in judicial proceedings.
SIC: EXP/INT'L