SCOTLAND
Express

By DAVID SCOTT
PUBLISHED: 00:01, Sat, Mar 28, 2015

One priest allegedly abused by the former leader of Scotland’s Roman Catholics claimed he would groom young clerics while hearing their confessions.

The allegations come days after O’Brien was stripped of high office and banished from public life by the Pope after a damning report.
Pope Francis last week agreed to O’Brien’s request to withdraw his “rights and duties” as a cardinal.

The highly unusual step, last taken in 1927, followed “private and prayerful discussion” between the two men.

O’Brien now leads a “strictly private life” as a cardinal in name only.
His career was ended by accusations of inappropriate behaviour against five priests in the 1980s.