Vatican Appoints Replacement for Disgraced Cardinal Keith O'brien
By Severin Carrell
A senior Vatican official has been appointed to replace the disgraced Scottish cardinal Keith O'Brien as archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh. Monsignor Leo Cushley, 52, a close and influential adviser to Pope Benedict and his successor Pope Francis, is based in Rome as head of the English-language section of the Vatican's civil service, functioning as a senior career diplomat for the Holy See. The appointment to succeed O'Brien, five months after he resigned in disgrace after the Observer revealed allegations of sexual impropriety, has come sooner than commentators had expected, suggesting the Vatican is keen to draw a line under the affair. In a statement to mark his appointment, Cushley alluded to the O'Brien crisis by acknowledging it was a "delicate" time for the Scottish church, and warned he would need months to get to grips with his new post and the damage caused by the scandal. "I know it's a delicate moment and that there is a lot to be done, but with God's grace and the kind support of the clergy and people of Edinburgh, I will work cheerfully and willingly with all the energy I can muster," he said. "There are certain important questions that I will also have to familiarise myself with. I have no jurisdiction in the diocese until after I have been ordained in late September. Only then will I be able to take stock of what has happened and see what can be done. "It is my sincere hope to do this always in truth and in charity, with a view to reconciliation and healing among the Catholics of Edinburgh. My first task is to preach the good news, Christ crucified and risen from the dead, to confirm my brother priests in their Catholic faith and ministry and to be a loving, simple, wise shepherd to the flock that has been entrusted to me." O'Brien's enforced resignation and retirement was a catastrophic event for the Scottish Roman Catholic church; he had been a vigorous critic of gay marriage and gay adoption legislation but admitted to having had homosexual relationships with other priests. After leaving Scotland several months ago, the cardinal is thought to be staying in an enclosed abbey in the Midlands. His departure also left the Scottish church with only three full-time bishops for its eight dioceses, creating a significant power vacuum and leadership crisis. Unusually, Cushley has never been a bishop and has not served in any Scottish diocese for more than 20 years. The Vatican said that Cushley, a Scot who had previously served as assistant priest and a school chaplain in Motherwell and Wishaw, has been a "close collaborator" with both the current and previous pope. Acting as an interpreter for the pope when needed (Cushley speaks Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese) he had been heavily involved in overseeing visits by heads of state to the Vatican including the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the archbishop of Canterbury. Cushley also accompanied each pope on official visits to English-speaking countries, including Pope Benedict's tour of the UK in September 2010; on that visit O'Brien officially welcomed the pontiff when he touched down in Britain at Edinburgh airport. During Pope Benedict's open-air mass at Bellahouston park in south Glasgow, Cushley introduced his family to the pope. The Edinburgh archdiocese has been under temporary management by Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow. Scottish Catholic sources and commentators said Cushley's long absence from the Scottish church and his lack of involvement in the internal divisions within the St Andrews and Edinburgh archdiocese was likely to be a bonus because it would allow a fresh approach. One source said many basic management and recruitment issues in the archdiocese had been neglected under O'Brien. Cushley's high-level diplomatic and political experience in Rome would also prove immensely useful; unlike O'Brien, who was known for tub-thumping megaphone politics, Cushley is likely to be quieter and more subtle in his dealings with Alex Salmond, the first minister. Prof John Haldane, a philosopher at St Andrews University and Vatican adviser, said: "Bringing someone in from the outside has a certain sense to it because Scotland is a small country. The archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh needs a protracted period of calm." Nigel Baker, the British ambassador to the Vatican, applauded the appointment; Baker said he had worked closely with Cushley in Rome. "This is an important and timely appointment of great significance for Scotland and the Scottish Catholic church," he said. A departing official at the secretariat of state, Cushley will be well-versed in the workings of the beleaguered Roman curia, the Vatican's central bureaucracy, which has been beset in recent years by allegations of infighting and conspiracy. But it is his pastoral experience – including stints in Burundi and South Africa – that is likely to have recommended him to Francis. And it is thought Cushley was likely to lead a formal inquiry, or "apostolic visitation", into the scandal surrounding his predecessor. In the wake of O'Brien's resignation, which came just before the conclave that elected him, Pope Francis has had to contend with some of the more unpleasant realities of the curia. In June he was reported to have acknowledged the existence of a "gay lobby" within the Vatican, and last week was dealt a heavy blow by claims that the prelate he chose to be his representative at the scandal-tainted Vatican bank, or Institute for Religious Works, had a record almost as colourful as that of the bank itself. The pope's spokesman, Federico Lombardi, denied a report in the Italian magazine L'Espresso alleging that Monsignor Battista Ricca lived more or less openly in Uruguay with a male Swiss army officer. It also claimed that Ricca was once found by firefighters in a lift with a local rent boy known to police.
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