Pope accepts resignation of Paris archbishop
Archbishop Michel Aupetit had offered to resign after a conservative newsweekly accused him of badly administrating the local Church and of having an inappropriate relationship with an adult woman
Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Archbishop Michel Aupetit of Paris on Thursday, the Vatican announced. The archbishop had admitted to an "ambiguous" relationship with an adult woman in 2012.
“The Holy Father has accepted the resignation from the pastoral care of the metropolitan archdiocese of Paris, France, presented by Archbishop Michel Aupetit, and has at the same time appointed Archbishop Georges Pontier as apostolic administrator sede vacante et ad nutum Sanctae Sedis of the same archdiocese,” according to a brief statement from the Holy See Press Office.
Archbishop Aupetit in a statement on Thursday said he chose to step down "to preserve the diocese from the division that suspicion and loss of trust are continuing to provoke."
The 70-year-old Aupetit had sent a letter to the pope offering to resign after the conservative, Paris-based newsweekly Le Point, first stated on social media on November 22 that it was investigating several complex issues that the archbishop had "brutally" handled in recent months.
Le Point also claimed Aupetit had inadvertently sent an email to his former secretary at the time that proves he had had an affair with a "consenting adult woman".
"My behavior towards her could have been ambiguous, implying the existence of an intimate relationship and sexual relations between us, which I strongly refute. I decided not to see her again and I informed her of this," Aupetit had earlier admitted.
Aupetit was a priest in the archdiocese of Paris at the time of the alleged relationship. He became Paris archbishop in 2018.
He had a long career as a physician, working as a doctor in a Parisian suburb before joining the priesthood. Aupetit was ordained in 1995.
Aupetit was a source of solace as he empathized with his former medical colleagues and praised healthcare workers for "the deep sense of your vocation: to care for your fellow human beings who are in distress" -- as they faced an influx of patients and a lack of life-saving respirators during the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.