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Cardinal Keith O’Brien
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London, March 4: Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic cleric, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, acknowledged yesterday 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.
Cardinal 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,” Cardinal O’Brien, 74, said in a statement.
The statement stunned many in the Scottish church and beyond. Some said the cardinal’s statement appeared to raise the possibility that the undefined sexual activities he acknowledged may not be restricted 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 Cardinal O’Brien, then a priest, served as a powerful supervisory figure in two Scottish seminaries. The others were young priests; it is not clear exactly when in the 1980s they say they were subject to his unwanted advances.
Initially, Cardinal O’Brien contested the allegations and said he was seeking legal advice. But yesterday, he offered a sweeping apology that was, however, bereft of detail. “To those I have offended, I apologise and ask forgiveness,” he said. “To the Catholic Church and the people of Scotland, I also apologise. 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 — who stunned the world with his own announcement on February 11 that he would step down — had ordered the cardinal to remove himself.
Benedict’s resignation, which he attributed to ill health and exhaustion, took effect on Thursday.
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