From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste in images
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2013
News that Pope Benedict had accepted the resignation of Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the UK’s most senior Roman Catholic cleric, archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh is a big challenge to the pope who will succeed Benedict.
The African cardinal widely tipped to be the first black pope in modern history, Cardinal Peter Turkson, who comes from Ghana, has already faced a firestorm of criticism last night after he laid the blame for clerical sex abuse crises at the feet of gay priests.
Turkson told an American journalist that similar sex scandals would never convulse churches in Africa because the culture was inimical to homosexuality. ‘African traditional systems kind of protect or have protected its population against this tendency,’ he told Christiane Amanpour of CCN.
‘Because in several communities, in several cultures in Africa homosexuality or for that matter any affair between two sexes of the same kind, are not countenanced in our society,’ he continued.
As the head of a major Vatican department – the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace – Cardinal Turkson 64 is ranked as the 5/2 second favourite to take the papal crown when a Conclave of Cardinals meets next month to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, who announced his abdication last week on the grounds of ill health.
O’Brien has denied the allegations and had been expected to continue in his post as archbishop until mid-March, when he was due to retire at age 75. In the statement, O’Brien apologised to any people he had let down and said he did not want the controversy to overshadow the election of the new pope.
His unexpectedly early resignation means the cardinal will not now take part in the election of a successor to Pope Benedict. This will leave Britain unrepresented in the process as he was the only cardinal in the British Catholic churches with a vote in the conclave.
O’Brien, who missed celebrating mass at St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh on Sunday, had been due to fly out to the Vatican on Tuesday for the conclave. His resignation is a heavy blow to the church and Benedict, whose papacy has been beset by repeated controversies over misconduct by clergy in Europe and the US and allegations of corruption and incompetence at the Vatican.
O’Brien has been an outspoken critic of gay rights, denouncing plans for the legalisation of same-sex marriage as “harmful to the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing of those involved”. He was named bigot of the year in 2012 by the gay rights group Stonewall because of his central role in opposing gay marriage laws in Scotland.
O’Brien case was reported to the Vatican by three priests and a former priest in Scotland over allegations of inappropriate behaviour stretching back 30 years. The four, from the diocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh, have complained to Nuncio Antonio Mennini, the Vatican’s ambassador to Britain, and demanded O’Brien’s immediate resignation.
The four submitted statements containing their claims to the nuncio’s office the week before Pope Benedict’s resignation on 11 February. They fear that, if O’Brien travels to the forthcoming papal conclave to elect a new pope, the church will not fully address their complaints.
The first allegation against the cardinal dates back to 1980. The complainant, who is now married, was then a 20-year-old seminarian at St Andrew’s College, Drygrange, where O’Brien was his “spiritual director”.
He was ordained, but he told the nuncio in his statement that he resigned when O’Brien was promoted to bishop. “I knew then he would always have power over me. It was assumed I left the priesthood to get married. I did not. I left to preserve my integrity.”
In a second statement, “Priest A” describes being happily settled in a parish when he claims he was visited by O’Brien and inappropriate contact between the two took place.
In a third statement, “Priest B” claims that he was starting his ministry in the 1980s when he was invited to spend a week “getting to know” O’Brien at the archbishop’s residence.
His statement alleges that he found himself dealing with what he describes as unwanted behaviour by the cardinal after a late-night drinking session. “Priest C” was a young priest the cardinal was counselling over personal problems. Priest C’s statement claims that O’Brien used night prayers as an excuse for inappropriate contact.
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
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Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.
-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ UN Disarmament Conference, 2002