UK cardinal who resigned admits sexual misconduct
LONDON—Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic cleric, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, acknowledged on Sunday that he had been guilty of sexual misconduct, a week after he announced his resignation and said he would not attend the conclave to choose the next Pope. The moves followed revelations that three current and one former priest had accused him of inappropriate sexual contact dating back decades.
O’Brien, the head of the Church in Scotland, is the highest-ranking figure in the Church’s recent history to make such an admission.
“I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal,” O’Brien, 74, said in a statement issued by Church officials in Scotland.
The statement stunned many in the Scottish Church and beyond. Some said his acknowledgment may mean it is possible that the cardinal, who faces an internal investigation by the Vatican, was admitting that the undefined sexual activities he acknowledged may not be restrict- ed to the known allegations, the earliest of which relates to 1980. Ordained in 1965, he became an archbishop in 1985 but was not named cardinal until 2003.
Last weekend, The Observer newspaper reported the accusations of impropriety with accounts from the four men. The first was a seminarian when O’Brien, then a priest, served as a powerful supervisory figure in two Scottish seminaries that prepared teenagers and young men for the priesthood. The other three were young priests; it is not clear exactly when in the 1980s they say they were subject to his unwanted advances.
Initially, O’Brien contested the allegations and said he was seeking legal advice. But on Sunday, he offered a sweeping apology that was, however, bereft of detail. “To those I have offended, I apologize and ask forgiveness,” he said. “To the Catholic Church and the people of Scotland, I also apologize. I will now spend the rest of my life in retirement. I will play no further part in the public life of the Catholic Church in Scotland.”
Many analysts saw the cardinal’s resignation and absence from the conclave as a result of papal pressure and British newspapers have cited unidentified Vatican officials as saying Pope Benedict XVI—who stunned the world with his own announcement on Feb. 11 that he would step down—had ordered the cardinal to remove himself.
Benedict’s own resignation, which he attributed to ill health and exhaustion, took effect on Thursday, bringing an end to an eight-year papacy overshadowed by scandals involving cover-ups of pedophilia and other forms of sexual abuse by Catholic clerics.
The Vatican and more than a billion Catholics worldwide now await the papal conclave this month, in which 115 cardinals will choose one among their number as Benedict’s successor. He will inherit a crisis over Church governance that Vatican experts have described as one of the legacies of the 85-year-old Benedict, a widely respected theologian with a devoted following whose critics faulted him with failing to deal conclusively with the sexual abuse scandals in the Church.