(Reuters) - The
Dutch Catholic Church, in a rare admission of guilt among senior clergy,
has confirmed that a bishop who died last year had sexually abused two
boys decades earlier.
The diocese of Roermond said a
Church commission had found that accusations against former bishop
Johannes Gijsen, dating back to his time as chaplain at a minor seminary
from 1958 to 1961, were "well founded".
The
admission came on Friday, the same day that Pope Francis made his first
public plea for forgiveness for "all the evil" committed by priests who
molested children, and said the Church had to do more to discipline
wayward clerics.
Mea Culpa, a Dutch
group supporting abuse victims, welcomed the Roermond statement. But it
said the accusations had been made while Gijsen was alive, and noted
critically that "complaints against living suspects are often declared
unfounded".
Bishop Frans Wiertz,
current head of Roermond diocese, said he accepted the commission's
findings and "regrets the abuse and suffering inflicted on the victims".
He has personally met the two men and apologized to them, he said.
The
Church's statement put Gijsen, who headed the diocese in southeastern
Netherlands from 1972 to 1993, among the few senior Catholic clergy
worldwide found guilty of abuse.
Katholiek
Nieuwsblad, the weekly that broke the story, said the commission found
Gijsen had groped the two boys and forced one to perform oral sex.
Gijsen
had been confronted with the oral sex accusation in 2011, but denied
knowing his accuser. The commission reopened his case a week after
Gijsen died because it received the second complaint of improper genital
touching, the weekly said. It concluded that Gijsen's denial was not
credible because the victim's family had said he used to visit them.
BISHOPS BLAMED
Gijsen
was one of several strict conservative bishops whom the Vatican
appointed in the Netherlands - often over the protests of priests and
parishioners - to roll back the strongly reformist turn that the Church
took there in the 1960s.
He
officially stepped down as bishop of Roermond in 1993 on health grounds,
but later served as bishop of the tiny Catholic community in Iceland
from 1996 to 2007. An abuse commission there accused him of covering up
molestation by another priest.
Few
bishops have been accused of active abuse in the scandal, which has
been rocking the Catholic Church for over two decades. Most of the
prelates who have stepped down did so for covering up the misdeeds of
their priests.
Two cardinals -
Hans Hermann Groer of Vienna and Edinburgh's Keith O'Brien - quit in
disgrace amid accusations of sexual misconduct with seminarians. A
Belgian bishop, Roger Vangheluwe of Bruges, stepped down after admitting
molesting his nephew.
The Vatican
has been investigating sexual abuse allegations against Archbishop
Josef Wesolowski, its former nuncio (ambassador) to the Dominican
Republic, since last September. His whereabouts and the status of his
case are not known.
Pope Francis,
who has been criticised by victims' support groups for not taking a
sufficiently strong stand against sexual abuse, last month named a
high-level group including an Irish abuse victim to help fight sexual
abuse in the Church.
That came after the
United Nations
Committee on the Rights of the Child accused the Church in February of
systematically turning a blind eye to clerical sexual abuse of minors.
The Vatican called its report "distorted" and "unfair".
Terry
McKiernan, founder of the website BishopAccountability.org, which
documents abuse cases, welcomed the pope's latest comments but said
victims wanted to see Church leaders taken to task for allowing abuse to
continue.
"The best thing he could
have done today would have been to step up to the microphone and
announce that he is beginning to remove bishops who have behaved
criminally in keeping priests in ministries where they don't belong," he
said.
(Reporting By Tom Heneghan)
Hulpverlening
roept nogal wat reacties op. Het grote probleem bij Hulp is het roepen
van Help. Niemand weet wat het beste bij iemand past of werkt, er is
geen totaal pakket Hulpverlening, geen eenduidige analyse over trauma's
en angsten. Het zou beter zijn te zeggen 'hey, ik wil je helpen maar ik weet niet hoe'! 
mei 1st, 2014
Ze nam tenslotte niet voor niets de moeite – en als één van de zeer weinigen – die te delen en suggesties te doen
http://www.bertsmeets.nl/35-jaar-doen-alsof/
mei 1st, 2014
http://www.bertsmeets.nl/hulpverlening/
* c.q. de illusie dat jij de door jou (danwel MCU ) communicatie zou kunnen stroomlijnen.
Buitengewoon vervelend dat je daar in dit kader de realistische opmerkingen van Anita Keijzer bij betrekt.
Je hebt kennelijk niet slechts nog steeds een andere agenda maar bovenal een aantal knap bizarre analyses w.o. van hulp vragen
mei 1st, 2014
mei 1st, 2014
¨ Je hebt kennelijk niet slechts nog steeds een andere agenda maar bovenal een aantal knap bizarre analyses w.o. van hulp vragen ¨
mei 1st, 2014
mei 2nd, 2014
http://sigmund.volkskrant.nl/?p=140430
http://sigmund.volkskrant.nl/?p=140429