The head of the Catholic Church in Belgium, Andre-Joseph Leonard,
described as "shocking" Sunday an ex-bishop's televised confession that
he had sexually abused two of his nephews.
"It is inappropriate
and shocking," Leonard told Belgium television RTBF of Roger
Vangheluwe's "detached and vacant tone" during the interview, in which
he had described "a kind of game" with one of the youngsters.
Leonard said Vangheluwe "should not have spoken".
Vangheluwe,
74, resigned as Bishop of Bruges last year after admitting to having
had sex with his underage nephew, but could not be prosecuted as the
statute of limitations, the legal period within which a crime can be
punished, had expired.
Last week, he again caused outraged when he
gave a television interview in which he also admitted to molesting a
second nephew but insisted he did not consider himself a paedophile nor a
threat to children.
After the first scandal, the Vatican ordered
him to seek "spiritual and psychological treatment" at a church
community at La Ferte-Imbault in France, and to stay out of the public
eye.
Following the interview, which outraged many in Belgium and
drew a sharp denunciation from the Council of Bishops, there have been
calls for him to be prosecuted.
He then disappeared from his French religious community.
Asked
about calls for tough penalties against Vangheluwe, Leonard said "he
has already been punished" in 2010, but did not exclude the possibility
of his being excommunicated.
This was "a possible choice, but not
the only one," Leonard said, adding that Vangheluwe would then become a
"free agent over whom we can longer exercise any control".
The
case has plunged the Belgian Catholic Church into new turmoil, with
several bishops asking the Vatican to act quickly to punish Vangheluwe.
In
September 2010, the church was rocked by nearly 500 cases of abuse by
priests since the 1950s, including 13 victims who committed suicide.