Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, had harsher words regarding the raid June 24, in which bishops gathered for a plenary meeting were detained all day as police confiscated cell phones, documents and computers.

“There are no precedents for this, not even in the old Communist regimes,” he told reporters in Rome June 26. “Magistrates held bishops for nine hours and searched the tombs of two cardinals,” Bertone said, likening the “unheard of” episode to a “kidnapping.”

Pope Benedict’s letter marking “this sad moment” was addressed to Mechelen-Brussels Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard, president of the Belgian bishops’ conference. The Pope expressed his “closeness and solidarity” with the bishops “for the surprising and deplorable methods of the searches” of the Mechelen Cathedral and archdiocesan buildings.

During the nine-hour search, a spokesman for the bishops’ conference said, police seized more than 400 files belonging to a commission established to investigate alleged abuse cases. Commission members announced June 28 they would resign because “the indispensable trust” between the commission and judicial authorities “no longer exists,” therefore compromising the commission’s relationship of trust with the victims, according to a statement from the bishops’ conference. The statement also said that members were prohibited from working because police had confiscated all of their materials.

Belgian Justice Minister Stefaan De Clerck defended the action, saying that bishops had been treated normally and that proper legal procedures were followed.

Vatican and Belgian Church authorities were particularly angered over the search of the tombs of two cardinals in the cathedral crypt. News reports said that holes had been drilled in the tombs and cameras inserted to look for possible hidden material.

Police searched the homes of Leonard as well as his predecessor at the helm of the Mechelen-Brussels archdiocese, Cardinal Godfried Danneels. It was not known what police were looking for at the cardinal’s home. He was archbishop during the service of former Bishop Roger Vangheluwe of Brugge, who stepped down in April after admitting to having sexually abused a young boy.

In May, the bishops of Belgium asked forgiveness of victims of priestly sexual abuse and promised wide-ranging steps to curb the problem in the future.