A panel set up by the Catholic Church in Belgium to investigate sex abuse by priests is disbanding after a police raid last week that confiscated documents the panel says were confidential.

Members of he Andriaenssens Commission, named after its president, child psychiatrist Peter Andrianssens, met today and announced they would be resigning because of the breach of confidentiality.

The commission had taken testimony from nearly 500 people in the last couple of months, victims who believed they were speaking confidentially.

The police raids, which also targeted bishops, drew the ire of the Vatican, and even Pope Benedict, in a letter to the Belgian bishops, referred to the “surprising and deplorable manner” in which the searches were carried out.

Benedict said justice should take its course, but with the fundamental rights of all involved being respected.

The Vatican, which called the Belgian ambassador to the Holy See in for an explanation, was particularly shocked by investigators drilling into the tombs of two deceased cardinals, apparently to lower tiny cameras in the tombs to see if documents were hidden there.

It was a scene one Beligan bishop compared to something out of  The Da Vinci Code.

“The Church should not be looking for favors,” one Vatican official told FOXNews.com. “But it shouldn’t be singled out for bad treatment, either.”

While the raids have shown Belgian authorities acting quite aggressively with the Catholic Church, that may be in part because of their poor record on pedophilia.

Notorious child rapist Marc Dutroux was sentenced to life in prison in Belgium in 2004 for abducting, imprisoning and raping six girls, two of whom he murdered and two of whom died of starvation while being kept in his dungeon.

Although he had previously been convicted of child rape, he was out on parole after just three years in prison when he struck again.