The Belgian bishops have defended the seal of confession after a court gave a Catholic priest a one-month suspended sentence for culpable negligence for not informing police about a man determined to commit suicide.
Fr Alexander Stroobandt of Bruges said a 54-year-old bipolar friend revealed his suicide plan in three telephone calls and four SMS messages. In the second call, Tony Vantomme and said he wanted the priest to hear his confession.
Despite the cleric's efforts to dissuade him from suicide, Vantomme then killed himself.
"I spoke with him for an hour and told him there were other solutions to his problems," Fr Stroobandt later told Belgian television. He said he was "bound hand and foot by the seal of confession" not to reveal their exchanges.
The court rejected the defence argument that Fr Stroobandt would have broken the seal of confession if he had informed the police. The man's wife, who filed the suit against the priest, argued that telephone exchanges were not a confession.
In its decision, the court upheld the seal of confession but said it did not excuse a priest from informing the police if a person was in dire need.
After the judgment, the bishops' conference issued a long defence of confession as a kind of professional secrecy protected by law.
"Chaplains are a kind of haven where people can entrust all their experiences and existential questions. Society more than ever needs this type of haven," the statement said.
Fr Stroobandt plans to appeal the decision. He has refused to reveal the content of his three calls, saying only that the first call was only small talk and Vantomme asked to confess in the second. After that, he was bound by a rule that was “important not only to me, but to all priests”.
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