SCOTLAND
Religion News Service
David Gibson | March 20, 2015
(RNS) Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who was accused of sexually harassing several men in a scandal that exploded on the eve of the 2013 conclave that elected Pope Francis, has renounced the “rights and privileges” of his office but gets to keep his prestigious title, the Vatican announced Friday (March 20).
O’Brien did not take part in the March 2013 conclave and now he will be barred from any future conclaves; at age 77, he would have lost his voting eligibility at age 80.
Francis had been under pressure to take some action against O’Brien since one of his victims revealed that an internal church report on O’Brien had been sent to Rome and was “hot enough to burn the varnish” off the pope’s desk.
At least five men – three priests, a former priest and a former seminarian – accused O’Brien of either sexually harassing them or pressuring them into sex, in allegations that went back to the 1980s. O’Brien was accused of being sexually active up through at least 2009.
Those were also the years in which O’Brien became increasingly outspoken in denouncing homosexuality and gay rights; he called homosexuality a “moral degradation” that was “demonstrably harmful” to gay people. In response, the gay rights group Stonewall crowned O’Brien “bigot of the year.”
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