Head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State, Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of the Archbishop of Paris, who unexpectedly offered to step down last week after admitting to an “ambiguous” relationship with a woman in 2012.
Paris Archbishop Michel Aupetit noted in a statement that he offered to step down “to preserve the diocese from the division that suspicion and loss of trust are continuing to provoke”.
In response to the resignation, the Vatican disclosed that the Pope accepted Aupetit’s offer, and named Monsignor Georges Pontier, to serve temporarily in his place pending the pontiff’s appointment of a permanent new Archbishop.
Aupetit wrote to Pope Francis offering to resign following a report in Le Point magazine claiming that he had a “consensual, intimate relationship” with a woman.
It is to be noted that Roman Catholic priests take vows of chastity and Aupetit told Le Point he didn’t have sexual relations with the woman. The article in Le Point relied on several anonymous sources who said they had seen a 2012 e-mail Aupetit sent by mistake to his secretary, however, Aupetit denied being the author of the email.
At the time of the alleged relationship, Aupetit was a priest in the archdiocese of Paris. He only became Paris archbishop in 2018.
Aupetit said in his statement: “I ask forgiveness of those I could have hurt and assure you all of my deep friendship and my prayers. I am greatly disturbed by the attacks against me”.
In an interview last week with Catholic radio Notre Dame, Aupetit said “I poorly handled the situation with a person who was in contact many times with me”.
Calling it a “mistake”, he disclosed that he decided no longer to see the woman after speaking with Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, the then-Paris archbishop, in 2012.
Only the Pope can hire or fire bishops, or accept their resignations, and at 70, Aupetit is five years away from the normal retirement age for bishops.
The timing of Aupetit’s announcement was unusual as it came as the Pope and the Vatican hierarchy were en route to Cyprus at the start of a five-day trip.
The resignation comes amid great upheaval in the French Catholic Church. A report in October estimated some 3,000 French priests had committed sexual abuse over the past 70 years.
The Vatican gave no reason for why Pope Francis had accepted Aupetit’s resignation, or why the decision had come so quickly after it had been offered.
French media have additionally pointed to alleged governance problems in the archdiocese, which could have also been an underlying reason behind Pope Francis’ swift decision to remove Aupetit.
According to some reports, previously, Pope Francis took his time to consider whether to accept a resignation offered as a result of a scandal. In several cases, even ones that many would see as more egregious, he has rejected the offer outright and told the bishop to remain.
In June, German Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the archbishop of Munich and Freising, offered to resign over the Catholic Church’s “catastrophic” mishandling of clergy sexual abuse cases, though not because he himself was implicated in wrongdoing, Pope Francis refused to accept it and Marx remains in office.
A French activist and former head of La Parole Libre, a group fighting sexual violence in the Catholic Church, strongly criticized the Pope for taking swift action in the case of Aupetit.
Francois Devaux claimed that “Pope Francis is losing all legitimacy by this terrible lack of judgement. This gentleman should read the Gospel again”.
Last year, the Pope accepted the resignation of French Roman Catholic Cardinal, Philippe Barbarin in connection with the cover-up of sexual abuse of dozens of boys by a predatory priest.
Barbarin offered to resign in 2019 after a French court convicted him of failing to report a pedophile priest. Pope Francis initially refused Barbarin’s offer, but accepted it more than a year later, and over a month after Babrarin’s conviction was overturned on appeal.
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