VATICAN CITY — A Belgian court ruled Sept. 9 that recent raids by police investigators on Roman Catholic Church offices were illegal, rendering the documents obtained inadmissible in judicial proceedings.
Among the disqualified evidence is testimony that sexual abuse by clergy may have led to at least 13 suicides.
On June 24, police seized documents, computers and cell phones from the home of Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard outside Brussels. Bishops attending a conference were detained for nine hours, and the tomb of a deceased archbishop was opened and searched.
More sensitive files were impounded at a second target, the headquarters of a panel set up in 1998 to investigate pedophilia within the church.
According to The Associated Press, those files included a report that abuse may have led at least 13 victims to kill themselves.
Pope Benedict XVI called the raids “surprising and deplorable,” and Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone described them as unprecedented “even under Communist regimes.” The church-backed investigating panel resigned en masse in protest.
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