(Brussels) Pope Francis withdrew his title of bishop from the Belgian Roger Vangheluwe who still benefited from this status fourteen years after having recognized child criminal acts committed for years, the conference of bishops of Belgium indicated on Thursday.
Roger Vangheluwe, 87, who lives as a recluse in an abbey in France, “has been returned to the secular state,” said Tommy Scholtès, spokesperson for the bishops of Belgium, confirming information from the official Vatican News media.
He recalled that the gesture had been requested several times in recent years by the bishops of Belgium, judging it “shameful that Roger Vangheluwe was able to officially remain bishop and priest”.
At the end of January, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo also asked the Vatican representative in Brussels, “for the smooth running of Pope Francis’ visit” planned for September in Belgium.
It is “an important step for the victims”, the Flemish liberal leader also noted on the X network.
Roger Vangheluwe was forced to resign as bishop of Bruges in 2010, when he admitted to having sexually abused one of his minor nephews for thirteen years, starting in the 1980s.
He then confessed to acts committed against a second nephew over two years.
His crimes being prescribed, he was never convicted by the courts, but the scandal resurfaced in the fall of 2023 in Belgium with the broadcast of a shocking documentary denouncing the inaction and silence of the Church for years. decades on sexual assaults committed by clergy.
The Belgian bishops then renewed their demand for dismissal.
They also argued to the Vatican that Mr. Vangheluwe’s canonical file now included “the statement of a victim who recently formally testified” against him.
“The secularization of Roger Vangheluwe means that he can now, in principle, go wherever he wants,” the bishops’ conference added.
“However, it has been agreed with the abbey where he resides to this day (Solesmes Abbey in the west of France, Editor’s note) that he can continue to stay there in isolation. The bishops insisted that he actually do it.”
Dismissing a prelate, a rare event, is considered the most serious punishment for an ecclesiastic, stripped of all his rights and prerogatives as a priest such as that of saying mass, including in private.
The most emblematic case of Francis’ pontificate concerns American Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former archbishop of Washington, convicted of sexual violence against minors, defrocked in 2019.