Top British Cardinal Resigns after Accusations of 'Inappropriate Acts'

By Alan Cowell and John F. Burns
The New York Times
February 25, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/world/europe/top-british-cardinal-resigns-after-accusations-of-inappropriate-acts.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

LONDON — A day after a newspaper accused him of committing “inappropriate acts” in his relations with three priests and one former priest, Cardinal Keith O’Brien said on Monday that he had resigned as Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic cleric.

But he made no specific public comment on the account in The Observer newspaper on Sunday, which said accusations dating back to the 1980s had been forwarded to the Vatican. Cardinal O’Brien also said he would not attend the deliberations at the Vatican over the selection of a new pope to replace Pope Benedict XVI, who stunned the Catholic world by announcing his own resignation on Feb. 11.

The cardinal’s dramatic move only days before Benedict’s formal departure on Thursday seemed likely to darken the shadow over the final days of a troubled papacy and the delicate transition to a new pope, evoking some of the most vexing issues of Benedict’s almost eight-year reign.

A statement issued by the media office of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland said Cardinal O’Brien had informed the pope some time ago of his intention to resign as archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh as his 75th birthday approached on March 17, but no date had been set.

The pope accepted that the resignation would take effect on Monday, Cardinal O’Brien said.

The cardinal said in the statement: “The Holy Father has now decided that my resignation will take effect today, 25 February 2013, and that he will appoint an apostolic administrator to govern the archdiocese in my place until my successor as archbishop is appointed.”

“In the meantime I will give every assistance to the apostolic administrator and to our new archbishop, once he is appointed, as I prepare to move into retirement.”

“Looking back over my years of ministry: For any good I have been able to do, I thank God. For any failures, I apologize to all whom I have offended,” he said.  

“I also ask God’s blessing on my brother cardinals who will soon gather in Rome to elect” Benedict’s successor. “I will not join them for this conclave in person. I do not wish media attention in Rome to be focused on me — but rather on Pope Benedict XVI and on his successor,” the cardinal said.

Cardinal O’Brien, whose office had initially said he would fly to Rome before the conclave, has been the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland since 1985, and was named a cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 2003. He was among the cardinals who attended the conclave that chose Benedict as John Paul’s successor in 2005.

On Monday, the Vatican announced that the pope had changed the laws governing the conclave to elect his successor, allowing cardinals to decide to begin the voting earlier than the customary 15-to-20-day waiting period after the papacy is vacant.

On Friday, the cardinals will begin meeting to decide when to open the conclave, with a decision expected by next Monday, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi said. 

The Vatican also said that the pope on Monday met with the three cardinals he had asked to investigate the Vatileaks scandal into the leaking of confidential documents — the subject of intense  media speculation in recent days. Father Lombardi said that Benedict would convey the contents of the cardinals’ report only to his successor, and not make it available to the cardinals entering the conclave.  

Cardinal O’Brien’s announcement came a day after The Observer newspaper reported that four men had made t complaints to the pope’s diplomatic representative in Britain, Antonio Mennini, and that the complaints had reached Archbishop Mennini in the week before Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation on Feb. 11.

Cardinal O’Brien had been scheduled to lead a Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh on Sunday morning, an occasion dedicated to a celebration of Benedict’s papacy. But he did not appear for the Mass. Instead, a statement was made on his behalf by Bishop Stephen Robson, an auxiliary prelate in the Edinburgh diocese.

“A number of allegations of inappropriate behavior have been made against the cardinal,” the church statement said. “The cardinal has sought legal advice, and it would be inappropriate to comment at this time. There will be further statements in due course.”

The Observer article said that one of the four men involved in the complaints against the cardinal had later left the priesthood and married, unable to reconcile himself to the idea of spending a lifetime under Cardinal O’Brien’s authority.

According to the newspaper, the man accused the cardinal of having made an “inappropriate approach” to him after night prayers when he was an 18-year-old seminarian in 1980, when Cardinal O’Brien, then a priest, was his spiritual director at a seminary in Melrose, south of Edinburgh.

Another of the complainants, who is still a priest, was said to have complained about inappropriate contact between him and Cardinal O’Brien, then a priest, during a parish visit. The third complainant, another priest, was said to have been invited to spend a week “getting to know” the cardinal, by that time an archbishop, at his residence in Edinburgh, and having to deal with “unwanted attention” from the senior cleric after a late-night drinking session.

The fourth man was said to have had his own experience of inappropriate contact when, in the early years of his priesthood, he sought counseling over personal problems from Cardinal O’Brien, then an archbishop.

The timing of The Observer’s article, which was apparently drawn from church sources with access to the file that Archbishop Mennini had forwarded to Rome, became an immediate focus of attention.

Reports from Rome in recent days have described the feverish speculation — and intrigue, according to Vatican insiders — surrounding the selection of the new pope, who is set to be chosen by a conclave of 117 eligible cardinals.

The Catholic Church has been besieged during Benedict’s eight years in office by scandals over pedophilia and other forms of sexual abuse by priests. But the time since Benedict announced his decision to retire on the grounds of failing health has been marked by a surge of Italian news media reports, many of them speculative, of gay sex scandals in the Vatican and other allegations of sexual abuse by priests.

On Saturday, the Vatican Secretariat of State issued a statement strongly rebuking recent reports in the Italian news media, calling them a dangerous attempt to try to condition the cardinal electors. The Vatican called it “deplorable” that ahead of the conclave there was “a widespread distribution of often unverified, unverifiable or completely false news stories, that cause serious damage to persons and institutions.”

Once called “Cardinal Controversy” by his critics, Cardinal O’Brien has often spoken out on homosexuality, adopting a more censorious attitude in recent years. Before his elevation to cardinal, he spoke publicly about the number of gay priests in the church and rebuked a Scottish bishop who had said that homosexuals should not be allowed to teach in Catholic schools.

But in more recent years, he has hardened his stance, opposing gay rights and describing homosexuality as immoral. He has opposed allowing gay men and lesbians to adopt children. He has also argued against same-sex marriage, which the British Parliament is in the process of approving, calling it “harmful to the spiritual, mental and spiritual well-being” of those involved. Last November, Stonewall, a British gay-rights group, gave the cardinal its “bigot of the year” award.

Cardinal O’Brien has broken with other strictures that are common among conservatives in the church hierarchy. He drew headlines in Britain last week by telling the BBC that a new pope should consider abandoning the church’s rule on celibacy. “It is a free world,” he said, “and I realize that many priests have found it difficult to cope with celibacy and felt the need of a companion, a woman, to whom they could get married and raise a family of their own.”

Stepping directly into the contentious maneuvering over who should be the next pope, he suggested that “it might be time for a younger pontiff from part of the developing world,” perhaps from Africa or Asia, “where the Catholic faith is thriving.”

He added, “It is something which the cardinals have to think about seriously, having had popes from Europe for such a long time now — hundreds of years — whether it is time to think of the developing world as being a source of excellent men.”