A leading German cardinal and confidante of Pope Francis offered to resign on Friday over the Catholic Church s catastrophic mishandling of clergy sexual abuse cases.
Cardinal Reinhard Marx declared in an extraordinary gesture that the scandals had brought the church to a dead end .
The archdiocese of Munich and Freising, where Marx has served as archbishop since 2007, published his resignation letter to the pope online, in multiple languages, and the cardinal said Francis had given him permission to make it public. It is important to me to share the responsibility for the catastrophe of the sexual abuse by Church officials over the past decades, the 67-year-old Marx wrote in the letter.
Cardinal George Pell was reportedly a senior member of the Vatican (File)
Sydney:
A dozen major Australian news organisations were fined Friday for breaching court orders that banned reporting on Cardinal George Pell s 2018 conviction on child sex abuse charges, which was later overturned.
The news outlets were found guilty of 21 counts of contempt of court for ignoring the gag order in the case of Pell, a top Vatican official who was convicted of abusing two choirboys but later cleared on appeal after spending a year in prison.
They were fined a total of Aus$1.1 million (US$855,000) and ordered to pay an additional Aus$650,000 in court costs.