VATICAN CITY
adnkronos
Vatican City, 25 Feb. (AKI) – Pope Benedict XVI was Monday due to meet with the three cardinals who probed the ‘Vatileaks’ scandal involving the leaking of his personal correspondence to Italian media last year by his former butler.
The pontiff’s meeting with Spain’s cardinal Julian Herranz, Italy’s Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi and the Slovak cardinal Jozef Tomko came after Italian daily La Repubblica cited an unnamed source last week as claiming Benedict resigned after the cardinals’ report uncovered a ‘gay lobby’ in the Vatican.
The meeting came the same day the pope accepted the resignation of UK’s most senior Catholic cleric Cardinal Keith O’Brien, after he was accused of ‘inappropriate acts’ against priests in a series of allegations by three priests and one former priest that were disclosed by Britain’s Observer newspaper.
O’Brien said on Monday he would not take part in the election for a successor to the 85-year-old pope when he steps down on Thursday. His landmark abdication, on the grounds of old age and frailty, is the first by a pope in 600 years.
Herranz, De Giorgi and Tomko were tasked by Pope Benedict XVI to shed light on the Vatileaks scandal and produced a 300-page dossier presented to the pontiff in two parts – one in July and the other in December.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.