STRASBOURG, France: Pope Leo XIV pressured a French bishop to step down over his \u201crelationships with women,\u201d according to the Vatican, with the defrocked clergyman hitting Wednesday back at the \u201cdisgusting\u201d situation.<\/p>\n
When announcing his resignation as the Bishop of Verdun in late September, Jean-Paul Gusching had hinted that health issues lay behind the decision to hang up his crosier.<\/p>\n
But the Holy See\u2019s embassy to France on Tuesday revealed that those were but \u201cone element\u201d behind that decision, with a preliminary canonical investigation into his behavior underway and the civil courts alerted to the matter.<\/p>\n
In an unusual intervention from the Apostolic Nunciature in Paris, the embassy said that after it had alerted the pontiff to the matter, Gusching committed \u201cto avoid in future any behavior toward women that could be interpreted as contrary to his holy vows.\u201d<\/p>\n
But \u201cgiven the ongoing nature of the situation, the Holy Father solicited and accepted his resignation… which took effect on September 27,\u201d the Nunciature added.<\/p>\n
A day after the embassy\u2019s statement came to light, Gusching admitted to having a relationship which lasted \u201cfrom around 2015 to 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the ex-bishop said that was \u201cthe only affair\u201d he had committed, insisting that the \u201cdisgusting\u201d push for his resignation was motivated by \u201cjealousies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey want my head,\u201d the ex-bishop told the local Journal de L\u2019Est republicain paper in an interview published on Wednesday evening.<\/p>\n
Asked whether the relationship was consensual, Gusching said: \u201cYes, she was a woman of age.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Vatican has ordered Gusching to \u201crefrain from any liturgical celebrations and public pastoral activities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Catholic bishops are strictly forbidden from having any sexual relationships, though the Church has been rocked in recent decades by a litany of child sex abuse scandals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
STRASBOURG, France: Pope Leo XIV pressured a French bishop to step down over his \u201crelationships with women,\u201d according to the Vatican, with the defrocked clergyman hitting Wednesday back at the \u201cdisgusting\u201d situation. When announcing his resignation as the Bishop of Verdun in late September, Jean-Paul Gusching had hinted that health issues lay behind the decision …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":89224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89226,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89207\/revisions\/89226"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}