UK Cardinal accused of inappropriate conduct to priests will not attend the enclave.

[No Elephants]

Feb 25, 8:51 AM EST

UK Cardinal skips conclave amid accusations

By NICOLE WINFIELD and GREGORY KATZ
Associated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Cardinal Keith O'Brien, Britain's highest-ranking Catholic leader, said Monday he wouldn't take part in the conclave to elect the next pope after being accused of improper conduct with priests - an unprecedented first head to roll in the mudslinging that has followed Pope Benedict XVI's decision to resign.

Benedict accepted O'Brien's resignation as archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh - submitted back in November because he is due to turn 75 next month, the normal retirement age for bishops. But simultaneously, O'Brien issued a statement Monday saying he would also skip the conclave because he didn't want to become the focus of media attention at such a delicate time for the church.

snip

It was the first time that a cardinal has said he was staying away from a conclave because of personal scandal, and comes in the wake of a grass-roots campaign to shame another cardinal, retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, into refraining from participating because of his role protecting sexually abusive priests.

snip

Speculation has been rife in the Italian media that the three cardinals - Julian Herranz, Jozef Tomko and Salvatore De Giorgi - would be authorized to share the information with fellow cardinals before the conclave. That assumed the cardinal electors would want to know details about the state of dysfunction in the Vatican bureaucracy and on any potentially compromised colleagues before possibly voting one into office.

Benedict appointed the three men last year to investigate the origins of leaks of the pope's documents, and they had wide-ranging powers to question cardinals. The leaked documents revealed petty wrangling, corruption, cronyism and even allegations of a gay plot at the highest levels of the Catholic Church. The pope's butler was convicted of aggravated theft in October for having stolen the papers and given them to a journalist who then published them in a blockbuster book.

snip

O'Brien's decision to skip the conclave is far different from that of Cardinal Bernard Law, who was forced to resign as archbishop of Boston in 2002 when the U.S. sex abuse scandal erupted. Law, accused of having covered up the actions of pedophile priests, participated in the conclave that elected Benedict and kept a plum job of archpriest of one of Rome's main basilicas until his retirement.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_VATICAN_POPE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-02-25-08-51-17


I know it's the least of it, but it's odd that you can be the Pope if you are over 80, but you cannot vote for the Pope if you are over 80.

No details on the inappropriate conduct. Also, supposedly, his resignation had nothing to do with the allegations.

[formercia]

1. He just resigned.

Good riddance.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21572724

[No Elephants]

2. How tone deaf is this BBC guy?

In Rome, the BBC's world affairs correspondent James Robbins said for a long time the Vatican had been able to "bat away" some criticism of other cardinals who may have been involved in covering up allegations of sexual abuse.

But these were more serious because they alleged Cardinal O'Brien was involved directly in improper behaviour towards other priests.

Initiating sexual (I assume0 contact with an adult males, priests or not, is more serious than covering up serial sexual abuse of children?

Wow.