Only the Sovereign Pontiff can decide to accept this resignation. The prelate would have maintained an affair in 2012, according to the weekly “Le Point”.
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Michel Aupetit, the Archbishop of Paris, proposed to the Pope to hand in his resignation, we learned from the diocese of Paris. The latter admitted that the prelate had had “ambiguous behavior” with a woman in 2012, after press revelations attributed to him an affair. “He proposed to the Pope to hand in his resignation” through “a letter sent this week”, said the diocese of Paris, confirming information from Figaro (paid item).
On its website, Le Point (paid item) asserted that the archbishop had that year had an intimate and consensual relationship with a woman, referring to an email he had sent in error and which left no doubt, according to the weekly, about the relationship maintained. It was not “not from a romantic relationship” neither of a “sexual relationship”, assured AFP the diocese on Friday. “He had opened up to his hierarchy at the time.”
“I admit that my behavior towards her may have been ambiguous, thus suggesting the existence between us of an intimate relationship and sexual relations, which I strongly refute”, replied Michel Aupetit in the article in Point. This resignation “is not an admission of guilt but a gesture of humility, a provision”, underlined the diocese. Michel Aupetit makes this gesture today “because he understands that there may be trouble among the Catholics of the diocese”, we added.
Only the Pope can decide to accept his resignation, to give him another function or to renew the archbishop. To make its decision, the Vatican will take into account two other elements: the revelations about buildings worth 700 million euros that do not appear in the accounts of the diocese of Paris and a loss of confidence within its community, explains the Holy See to France Télévisions.