Godfried Danneels

Godfried Maria Jules Danneels (born 4 June 1933) is a Belgian cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as the Metropolitan Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels and the chairman of the episcopal conference of his native country from 1979 to 2010. He was elevated to the cardinalate in 1983. His resignation at the age of 75 was accepted on 18 January 2010.

Biography

Early life and ordination

Born in Kanegem, Tielt, West Flanders, he was the eldest of six siblings. Danneels entered the Grand Seminary of Bruges to become a priest. He was ordained on 17 August 1957 by Emiel-Jozef De Smedt, Bishop of Brugge.

Professor and pastor

He studied Thomistic philosophy at the Higher Institute of Philosophy in Leuven and theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. After obtaining his doctorate in theology, he taught at the Bruges seminary and at the Catholic University of Leuven.

As a scholar, he carried out a profound study of the liturgy. The articles he wrote for the Dictionary of the Liturgy have made him famous throughout the Catholic world. Danneels was actively involved in writing Sacrosanctum Concilium, a document which initiated the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council.

Bishop

On 4 November 1977, Danneels was named Bishop of Antwerp by Pope Paul VI. He received his episcopal consecration on the following December 18 from Cardinal Leo Joseph Suenens. Danneels was promoted to the Archbishopric of Mechelen-Brussel on 19 December 1979 and thus the Primate of Belgium and the Bishop of the nation's Catholic military ordinariate.

Cardinal

Daneels was created a Cardinal-Priest of Santa Anastasia by Pope John Paul II in the consistory of 2 February 1983.

Since 2001, Danneels has been a part of the permanent secretariat of the episcopal synod. He is also a member of the Curial Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and of the Congregation for the Clergy. Between 1990 and 1999, he was international chairman for Pax Christi, a Catholic peace organisation. Danneels was awarded honorary doctorates by Georgetown University and the Catholic University of Tilburg. In 1996, he underwent a major heart operation.

In 2003, Danneel's was voted the "most remarkable personality of the year" by Flemish television viewers. His mother tongue in this bilingual (or trilingual) country is Dutch. But he also speaks English, French, German and Italian fluently. In 2005 he also led the funeral service of Grand Duchess Josephine Charlotte of Luxembourg.

Regarding euthanasia, Danneels said on 13 April 2008:

"... it is a choice between two civilizations, a civilization of people who want to take control of themselves and a civilization with a god and place for superhuman elements ... it is an excrescence of a typical evolution, of a cancerous growth of consciousness that luckily woke up during Renaissance but that has taken cancerous proportions now, that broke away."

Concealment of child sex abuse

Perhaps Daneels' most difficult moment came in 1998, when a court found that the Belgian Catholic Church had failed to protect the victims of a paedophile priest. Danneels voluntarily testified in court, but denied that he had known anything about the abuse. It was the first time ever that a cardinal had appeared before a secular court in Belgium.

On 8 April 2010, Danneels, already retired, recommended temporary silence about a sex abuse case that had involved Bishop Roger Vangheluwe in the late 1970s to early 1980s, before Vangheluwe became a bishop. Daneels advised the victim, a nephew of Vangheluwe, to delay a public statement until Vangheluwe had retired.^[1] At another meeting Vangheluwe, in Danneels' presence, made a private apology, which the victim rejected and went public with his charges. On 23 April 2010, Bishop Vangheluwe resigned, admitting his guilt publicly. Four months later, Vangheluwe's nephew supplied tape recordings of the two meetings to two Belgian newspapers, which published them on 28 August 2010.^[2] One of the two newspapers, De Standaard, described Danneels' action as "containment, nothing more", saying that Danneels' "only aim is to avoid having the case made public so many years after the facts".^[2] The Belgian police then questioned Danneels with regard to the case, concerning which a priest had tried to alert him in about 1996 but had not been heeded.^[2]

Speaking through a spokesman, Toon Osaer, Danneels explained that he had been unprepared for the meeting and that his proposal that the victim remain silent was "an improvisation".^[3]

Papal conclave of 2005

Upon the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005, Danneels was listed as a possible successor (or papabile) although with weakened credentials due to the fact that he was an archbishop of a country where abortion, euthanasia and same-sex unions had recently been legalized and where, under his watch, church attendance and pastoral vocations have dropped to historical lows.^[4][5][6]

Danneels participated in the 2005 papal conclave, which elected Pope Benedict XVI.

Retirement and succession

In 2008, Danneels reached the mandatory age of retirement and, on 18 January 2010, he was replaced as Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels by André-Mutien Léonard, "known as one of the most 'conservative' of the prelates of the Belgian Catholic Church".^[7]

References

1. ^ BBC News
2. ^ ^{a b c} Belgian Church Leader Urged Victim to Be Silent by Steven Erlanger, New York Times, 30 August 2010
3. ^ "Belgium: Cardinal Apologizes for Sugguesting Temporary Cover-Up of Bishop's Abuse", by the Associated Press, New York Times, 31 August 2010.
4. ^ Daily Mail UK: "Police raid home of Belgian archbishop in sex abuse probe" June 25, 2010
5. ^ Catholic Culture.org: "Decline of Catholicism in Belgium "troubling," Pope says" November 23, 2003
6. ^ National Castholic Reporter: "Belgium a 'perfect storm' on sex abuse crisis" June 28, 2010
7. ^ Liberal Belgian Archbishop Likely to be Replaced by Orthodox "Conservative"

External links

• Official biography
• Godfried Danneels (Dutch)
• Belgium's Danneels Could Succeed Pope John Paul II (The Guardian, London, Wednesday 6 April 2005)
• Belgian prelate says vocations crisis is wall against church’s future (Catholic News Service publishes about the stands of Cardinal Danneels while taking a glance at main papabili)
• On the occasion of Danneels' visit to P. R. China in late March 2005, BBC reports on China's tense links with Vatican