Roma Admits Bishop Seane Resigned To Clear His Name

By Tsaone Basimanebotlhe
Monitor
August 14, 2017

http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?aid=70939&dir=2017/august/14

Bishop Valentine Seane

Despite last week’s denials by the Vicar General, Father Andrew Makgetla that Bishop Valentine Seane was forced to resign, a statement he sent to different Roman Catholic branches, shows that the Bishop resigned to clear his name.

Seane resigned last week following an investigation into accusations of sexual abuse.

In the press statement issued last Friday to the Catholics around the country, Makgetla explained that the Catholic Church of the Diocese of Gaborone “is extremely saddened by circumstances surrounding the recent resignation of its Bishop. Bishop Seane resigned his post to assuage the accusation and allegations against him. This painful event took the church by surprise. In the light of this, we want to assure Catholics that the leadership of the Church is looking into all aspects of the current situation.”

Father Makgetla said The Holy See, through the apostolic Nunciature to Botswana received unsigned letters from different groups including a group calling itself Catholic Community of Botswana, something that the Father denied last week in an interview with sister publication, Mmegi.

In the statement, Makgetla said immediately upon the receipt of each and every letter, even though “unsigned and impossible to verify”, the complaints lodged were promptly investigated. “All proper procedures and processes were seriously followed.” He then, however, states that the  present leadership of the Sisters of Calvary “have categorically rejected the accusations against them in a recent newspaper report”.

Makgetla said the Sisters stated in a letter that “we have never written any letter to the Holy See (through the Nunciature in Pretoria) this year or in the past concerning this issue and if there are some of the Sisters of Calvary or our ex-Sisters of Calvary who have experienced sexual mistreatment by Bishop Seane,

the present leadership was only recently informed of the said allegations”.

Makgetla said the Sisters of Calvary wrote that they love their church and they know the protocol to follow to solve their problems within the church. In his press release dated August 8, 2017, Bishop Seane, in his sudden and surprise resignation, said “after prayer and reflection, I decided to step down from my present ministry of leadership of the Diocese of Gaborone for personal reasons. I resigned from the position of being the Bishop of Gaborone. I am still a Catholic priest and Bishop. After some time, providence and the church will decide how best I can continue to serve the body of Christ; the church,” Seane wrote.

Following the resignation, The Monitor sister publication, Mmegi, came into possession of correspondence between the local Sisters and the Catholic headquarters, in Rome, Italy and the Pretoria leadership requesting intervention as they had suffered in silence for too long.  In one of the letters, they wrote that, “Bishop Seane’s insatiable sexually needs are putting us at risk more so that he does not use condoms, hence the urgent resolution of this matter (sic). The end result of his actions, we are in spiritual crisis of unending abortions.”

They wrote that some of them were on the verge of resigning from sisterhood and are afraid that their congregation will die a natural death. Hence they appealed to Marc Cardinal Quellet in Rome to save them from this misery.