Trouble at the top: Cardinal steps down

The most senior Catholic clergyman in Britain, cardinal Keith O'Brien resigned yesterday after three Catholic priests and an ex-priest reported allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards colleagues stretching back more than three decades.

The four sent their complaints to the Vatican's ambassador to Britain and demanded the cardinal's immediate resignation. A spokesman for the cardinal said that the claims were contested.

The cardinal has been an outspoken opponent of gay rights, branding homosexuality as immoral, has tried to ban gay adoption and most recently has condemned same-sex marriages.

No wonder gay rights charity Stonewall made cardinal O'Brien Bigot of the Year 2012.

The complaints were delivered just before Pope Benedict's resignation, prompting speculation that this might have been one of the reasons for the Pope's unexpected action.

O'Brien was Britain's only cardinal with a vote in the papal elections, but he indicated yesterday that he would not be taking part.

The first allegation against the cardinal appears to date back over 30 years. O'Brien was then working at a seminary and reportedly made an inappropriate approach to a student priest after night prayers.

A second priest described being happily settled in a parish when, he claims, he was visited by O'Brien and "inappropriate contact" between the two took place.

In a third statement a priest, who was then a young man, claims he was invited to spend a week "getting to know" O'Brien at the archbishop's residence. He alleges "unwanted" behaviour by the cardinal after a late-night drinking session.

Another young priest being counselled by O'Brien over personal problems claims that O'Brien used night prayers as an excuse for inappropriate contact.

One of the men making the complaint said that the church "tends to cover up and protect the system at all costs."

Cardinal O'Brien, who had been due to retire shortly, has denied the accusations.

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Was this the scandal that made the Pope resign?

The Vatican has always been wracked with scandals, financial, sexual and political. Now the Italian media is suggesting one particularly juicy example is at the heart of Pope Benedict XVI's surprise decision to resign.

Italian newspaper La Repubblica has revealed that high-ranking actively homosexual Vatican clerics were being blackmailed.

The day the Pope decided to resign, December 17, Benedict was handed a file of documents from three cardinals, appointed to probe the Vatican "Vatileaks" scandal.

It appears to have started with the Pope's butler Paolo Gabriele, who was convicted of stealing private documents from the Pope and selling them to the highest bidder.

The stolen papers, many of them the Pope's private letters, showed the Vatican as a hotspot of factional squabbling and intrigue.

The papers also made it clear that gay Vatican clerics were susceptible to blackmail.

The Vatican, it seemed, has a gay clergy network which enjoys sexual encounters in villas and saunas in Rome and even in the Vatican itself.

Three senior cardinals appointed by the Pope have prepared a 300-page dossier spelling it out.

The dossier describes a number of warring Vatican groupings, with one powerful Vatican group being made up of sexually active homosexual clergy.

It appears that poor Pope Benedict XVI took one look at the contents of the dossier and decided he should go and leave this particular problem, and a good few others, for his successor at the top of the Church of Rome.

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Controversy throughout the ages

Revered by many, the papacy is not without its darker side...

• Stephen VI dug up his dead predecessor and tried him for various crimes. Found guilty, he was thrown into the Tiber.
• John XII took his mother on as a lover. He murdered several people and was fond of hacking off his enemies' limbs.
• Benedict IX was also accused of rape and murder. He sold his papal throne to his successor.
• Boniface VIII accepted cash for appointing bishops and cardinals.
• Urban II attacked the Muslim world, starting 500 years of religious warfare.
• Urban VI, a true psychopath, was said to have complained when his enemies didn't scream loud enough under torture.
• John XXII was the richest man in the entire world. He ruled that "witches" and "heretics" could be accused after death. When found guilty their land was seized by the pope.
• Sixtus IV started the Spanish Inquisition and its torture of Jews, Moors and heretics. He also had children with his eldest sister.
• John XXIII was stripped of his title after five years and declared the anti-pope. He was accused of murder, rape, sodomy, incest and piracy - though an intriguing comment from a historian of the time added that "the most scandalous charges were suppressed."
• Urban XIII tried Galileo for heresy for claiming that a spherical Earth revolved around the Sun. This heresy was not lifted until 350 years later.
• Pius XII was the pope during Hitler's reign of terror and didn't so much as speak out about the man who was slaughtering millions. He claimed there wasn't enough evidence that the Holocaust was actually happening.
• John Paul II publicly condemned all forms of birth control and gay marriage. His reaction to the paedophile priest scandals was a feeble apology for years of moving paedophile priests, and secret pay-offs to families for not denouncing the church publicly. He also had a record of support for right-wing dictatorships in Latin America and opposition to Liberation Theology.