Belgian commission on abuse resigns

A BELGIAN Catholic Church-backed commission probing hundreds of reported cases of child abuse by priests announced its resignation en masse yesterday, after police raids on its offices that angered the Pope.

“The entire committee is going to resign,” one of its members, Karlijn Demasure, told television cameras following a meeting of the body set up in 2000 to investigate paedophilia within the Church.

A theology professor at the Saint Paul University of Ottawa, Canada, Demasure, said that “trust between victims and the commission” and between “the commission and the judicial authorities” was now “broken” and that it was no longer possible to go on.