Spokesman Resigns After Archbishop of Brussels' Remarks on Homosexuality and Sex Abuse EWTN News Brussels, Belgium, Nov 4, 2010 Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard of Brussels, Belgium has come under attack for his comments on homosexuality, AIDS and sexual abuse of children. His spokesman has resigned in the resulting controversy and a lawyer for a homosexual group filed a complaint against him. The archbishop had voiced remarks critical of homosexual relationships. "When you mistreat the environment it ends up mistreating us in turn. And when you mistreat human love, perhaps it winds up taking vengeance,” he wrote in a book last month in a passage on those who carry HIV. "All I'm saying is that sometimes there are consequences linked to our actions," he continued, according to Agence France Presse, suggesting that the AIDS epidemic is “a sort of intrinsic justice.” The archbishop rejected the idea he was stigmatizing those who are HIV positive. In a recent television appearance, Archbishop Leonard also discussed priests who abused children in their care. Saying that they must be made aware of what they did, he commented "but if they're no longer working, if they have no responsibilities, I'm not sure that exercising a sort of vengeance that will have no concrete result is humane." The Bishop of Antwerp Johan Bonny distanced himself from this comment, calling it “a personal point of view” and not that of the Church. After All Saints’ Day Mass Archbishop Leonard said he had been misunderstood, insisting he believes sexually abusive priests should face justice. On Nov. 2, the archbishop’s spokesman Juergen Mettepenningen announced that he was resigning after three months on the job. He said the archbishop had promised he would avoid statements to the media but had failed to do so. "A lack of trust means that I neither wish nor want to continue working as Monsignor Leonard's spokesman," he said, adding that in his view the archbishop “acts like a motorist driving on the wrong side of a freeway who thinks all the other motorists are wrong.” Marie De Meester, a lawyer for a homosexual rights group, filed a complaint against the archbishop in the northern city of Bruges. "I believe the archbishop is violating anti-discrimination law and committing slander," he said, AFP reports. The controversy follows revelations of nearly 500 cases of sexual abuse by priests since the 1950s, including 13 victims who later committed suicide.

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