At least 69 priests have resigned en masse after accusing their bishop of embezzling £78,000 ($100,000) of Church funds for personal use, and of having an affair.
Priests from the Diocese of Ruteng on the island of Flores, Indonesia, submitted their resignations as episcopal vicars and parish priests, demanding that Bishop Hubertus Leteng overhaul how the diocese is run.
Fr Marthen Chen said reform was badly needed “so the Church can be truly in line with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. “We demand renewal in pastoral work as well as in Church and financial management.”
Bishop Leteng is alleged to have secretly borrowed £73,000 ($94,000) from the Indonesian bishops’ conference and a further £23,000 ($30,000) from his own diocese without providing an accountability report.
One priest told ucanews.com that the bishop had said it was to finance the education of a poor youth who was studying to be a pilot. When pressed for details, the bishop is alleged to have told them it was none of their business.
The resignations come a year after 112 of the diocese’s 167 priests signed a letter of no confidence in the bishop, expressing their suspicions that the money went to a woman with whom the bishop was alleged to have had an affair.
The bishop has denied the allegation, calling it “slanderous”.
Another priest said the bishops’ conference had investigated the case and submitted a report to the Vatican, but no action has yet been taken.
Bishop Leteng has been in post since 2010. His predecessor, Bishop Eduardus Sangsun, served for 24 years.
The diocese is located in the city of Ruteng on Indonesia’s southeastern Flores Island. It numbers 700,000 Catholics.
Cardinals want lay people to have more say on bishops
The Pope’s Council of Cardinals have talked about how to better involve lay people and religious in the selection of new bishops.Greg Burke, director of the Vatican press office, said that lay involvement was “something that already exists”, but that the council sought a “more systematic, more extensive way” to do it.
The Pope and his advisers also discussed whether local bishops rather than the Vatican could decide on whether permanent deacons might be permitted to marry or be ordained as priests.
Mr Burke said that the cardinals and Pope looked specifically at the possibility of allowing bishops to determine whether a permanent deacon who is widowed can remarry or whether a permanent deacon who is unmarried or widowed can be ordained to the priesthood without having to “wait for a decision to be made in Rome”, as is the current rule.
Burke said it was “what the Pope calls a ‘healthy decentralisation’.”
The meeting also included a discussion of the proposed new descriptions of the work of the offices dealing with the evangelisation of peoples, Eastern churches, inter-religious dialogue and legislative texts.
John Paul ‘pondered abdication’
St John Paul II asked aides if he should resign because of his failing health, his former secretary has recalled.Archbishop Mieczysław Mokrzycki of Lviv, Ukraine, said in a new book that John Paul II raised the question with Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Secretary of State, and other cardinals and bishops around the dinner table.
“Everyone advised against it. They were saying he is the Holy Father and that that means carrying out the mission to the end.”
