Footage of the incident released Saturday showed a young man approaching Archbishop Andre Leonard on Monday and smacking him with a pie. A church official says the archbishop will not press charges against the unknown attacker. The incident came amid growing turmoil within Belgium's Roman Catholic church, which faces an investigation into hundreds of cases of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. Leonard himself shocked Catholics by sympathizing with priests accused of pedophilia and by saying that homosexuals deserved to get AIDS.

Days after comments in which he declared that AIDS was God's punishment for being gay, Belgian Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard was struck with a pie as he stood at the altar during a service.On Tuesday the Archbishop's spokesman resigned , saying, "Archbishop Léonard has sometimes acted like someone who’s driving against the traffic and thinks everyone else is wrong.”

Labels: AIDS, Belgium, bigotry, Catholic Church, justice, religion