Vatican City – If the reports of abuses were not enough, as in the recent case of the Jesuit Marko Rupnik, or the reporting of gay club within the seminaries, as Benedict XVI said in the book published posthumously by his will, now another tile falls on the Catholic Church: alleged ‘sex parties’ during the lockdown due to Covid.
The story comes from Newcastle, in Great Britain, a diocese that had seen a canon die by suicide and a bishop resign. Now an investigation by the Vatican, entrusted to the Bishop of Liverpool, Monsignor Malcolm Patrick McMahon, will have to verify if the news of the ‘celebrations in the cathedral’ is true and if the subsequent events are in some way connected to each other. A difficult moment therefore for the Church of Pope Francis who once again today launches an appeal for unity: “The solution to divisions is not to oppose someone, because discord generates more discord. The true remedy begins by asking God for peace, reconciliation, unity”, writes Bergoglio on social media. And in Italy the cardinal president of the CEI, Matteo Zuppi, he opened the permanent council precisely by saying that “only unity allows the community to be creative” and therefore it is necessary to avoid “certain discussions, calculations and polarizations”. The cardinal of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Hollerich, today in the Vatican to present an initiative with the other Christian denominations, minimizes: “I’m not worried that there are different opinions in the Catholic Church, it’s quite normal”.
Returning to the English case, an extraordinary investigation was therefore decided by the Vatican for an alleged ‘sex party’, during the lockdown, in St Mary’s Cathedral in Newcastle. This ‘accident’ could be – at least according to the English press – at the origin of Robert Byrne’s resignation as bishop of Hexham and Newcastle last December. The Archbishop of Liverpool, who is conducting the investigation, has been asked to prepare an in-depth report on the events that led to Bishop Byrne’s resignation. But at the moment it is not known whether the bishop was at the alleged party or was in any case aware of it.
During the lockdown, Father Michael McCoy, who was the dean at the time and who later committed suicide, allegedly asked several faithful if they would like to participate in a “sex party” on a property adjacent to St Mary’s Cathedral, Newcastle. Some parishioners have reported the fact to the diocese. The Vatican investigation would therefore have multiple objectives: to verify whether the events reported really happened and whether they are connected to McCoy’s suicide and the subsequent resignation of Bishop Byrne.
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