ROME
The New York Times
By GAIA PIANIGIANI and LAURIE GOODSTEIN
SEPT. 25, 2014
ROME — In another sign of his willingness to exert discipline in the church hierarchy, Pope Francis removed a conservative bishop in Paraguay on Thursday who was seen as a renegade by his fellow bishops and had sheltered a priest accused of molesting seminarians in several countries.
Pope Francis decided to dismiss the bishop, Rogelio Ricardo Livieres Plano of the Diocese of Ciudad del Este, to preserve the “unity of both the bishops and of the faithful” and “under the weight of serious pastoral concerns,” the Vatican said in a statement.
The Vatican spokesman said the reasons had more to do with the bishop’s clashes with his colleagues than with his role in protecting the accused priest. The Vatican sent a delegation to Paraguay in July to report back.
“The important problem was the relations within the episcopacy and in the local church, which were very difficult,” said the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, adding that the bishop was in Rome this week to discuss the conclusions of the report with his superiors.
Father Lombardi said the accusations of sexual misconduct against the priest, the Rev. Carlos Urrutigoity, an Argentine who had worked for years in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, were “not central, albeit have been debated.”
Bishop Livieres had promoted Father Urrutigoity to be his vicar-general — a position that often includes responsibility for handling accusations of clergy sexual abuse in a diocese — despite warnings to him from the former bishop of Scranton, Pa., Joseph Martino, who called Father Urrutigoity “a serious threat to young people.”
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