Pope deplores raids by Belgian police investigating child abuse

Yet again the Pope and the Catholic Church have misread the public mood about the anger of the child abuse scandal that the Catholic Church is shrouded in.

The Belgian Police have started raiding Catholic Church Offices investigating child abuse.

Pope Benedict has attacked the Belgian Police in a message of support to the Bishops of Belgium;

"I want to express, dear brother in the Episcopate, as well as to all the Bishops of Belgium, my closeness and solidarity in this moment of sadness, in which, with certain surprising and deplorable methods, searches were carried out."

So, yet again we see the Pope preferring to cover up the child abuse within the Catholic Church rather than helping the appropriate authorities sort it out and eradicate this awful abuse.

Police in Leuven, central Belgium, last Thursday seized nearly 500 files and a computer from the offices of a Church commission during their investigation of allegations of sex abuse.

They also searched the Church's headquarters and the Brussels archdiocese in Mechelen, north of the Belgian capital.

The Belgian Justice Minister, Stefaan De Clerck has defended the police action, in a series of TV interviews on Sunday, and said the investigation was legitimate.

"The bishops were treated completely normally during the raid on the archdiocese and it is false to say that they received no food or drink,".

Mr De Clerck said the Vatican's reaction had been excessive as it was based on false information.

Prosecutors said the action concerned alleged "abuse of minors committed by a certain number of Church figures".

It is a great shame that Pope Benedict instead of attacking the Police isn't urging the Belgian Bishops to assist the Police so their investigation can be swift rooting out the perpetrators of the child abuse so the Catholic Church can then move on.

Standing in the way of the Police is just proving once again how out of touch Pope Benedict is with the public and others on the awful situation.

Pope Benedict wrong to describe criticism of child abuse in the Catholic Church as "petty gossip"

I have blogged about paedophiles and child abuse within the Catholic Church before, you can read it here.

So, regular readers of my little blog will be happy (or not) to see me say a small well done to the Catholic Church for finally highlighting publicly some of the work they are doing to eradicate this despicable behaviour by some of it's own clergy.

Of course it is not just the actual deed of abuse that is wrong, it is also the cover up by various people in senior positions within the Catholic Church that is as wrong.

Pope Benedict however needs to learn and understand the pure anger felt by those who have been abused, not just by those within his Church but by anyone and this weekend the Pope spoke and said not to be intimidated by critics, in a veiled reference to recent (and long term) anger at himself and the Catholic Church over sex abuse scandals.

At a mass in Rome's St Peter's Square, he said his faith would help give him the courage to deflect "petty gossip".

Pope Benedict has recently been accused of failing to act over the case of an American priest, Father Lawrence Murphy, who it is alleged to have abused around 200 deaf boys in Milwaukee.

The Pope told the tens of thousands of people gathered to hear him this weekend that God helped lead "towards the courage of not allowing oneself to be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion".

He also went onto say man sometimes fell to the "lowest, vulgar levels" and sunk "into the swamp of sin and dishonesty".

In my opinion, yes, I do have personal opinions the Pope has chosen his words very carefully, but cowardly.

He seems happy to deflect the criticism of child abuse within the Catholic Church as petty gossip but not to criticise those within the Church who have become, or joined as paedophiles, why is that?

The Pope has apologised to victims of abuse before and recently said sorry to them in a pastoral letter to Irish Catholics.

He said he acknowledged the sense of betrayal in the Church felt by victims and their families.

Those of dominant opinion are absolutely sickened by the continuos stream of stories of child abuse and paedophole priests within the Church (not just the Catholic Church, although mainly) that come out month after month, year after year.  Perhaps Pope Benedict should think on that before criticising the masses.

The Vatican press team do not like the continued criticism and put out rebuttal after rebuttal trying to make out the Catholic Church is holier than though.

When will the Catholic Church stop chasing headlines and just put a stop to this?  Paedophiles and child abuse in any organisation is wrong, within the Church it is actually worse as the Priests are there in a position of trust and they abuse that trust when they abuse a child!