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Disgraced Cardinal Keith O'Brien to leave Scotland | Disgraced Cardinal Keith O'Brien to leave Scotland |
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Cardinal Keith O'Brien is to leave Scotland for several months after admitting improper sexual conduct, the Vatican has confirmed. | Cardinal Keith O'Brien is to leave Scotland for several months after admitting improper sexual conduct, the Vatican has confirmed. |
He resigned in February after three priests and a former priest alleged improper conduct back in the 1980s. | |
The Vatican said that with the Pope's approval Cardinal O'Brien would leave Scotland "for the purpose of spiritual renewal, prayer and penance". | The Vatican said that with the Pope's approval Cardinal O'Brien would leave Scotland "for the purpose of spiritual renewal, prayer and penance". |
The Vatican will agree any decision regarding his future arrangements. | The Vatican will agree any decision regarding his future arrangements. |
In March the cardinal admitted that his sexual conduct had "fallen beneath the standards" expected of him. | |
He had been since planning to move to a church house in Dunbar. | |
However, on Wednesday the Vatican said that with the Pope's approval Cardinal O'Brien would leave Scotland "for the purpose of spiritual renewal, prayer and penance". | |
Locked horns | |
Cardinal O'Brien was Britain's most senior Roman Catholic cleric until he stood down as the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh in February. | |
As a result Cardinal O'Brien took no part in the election of the new Pope. | |
In an interview with BBC Scotland shortly before the allegations against him were made public, the cardinal said he believed priests should be able to marry and have children if they wished. | |
He said it was clear many priests struggled to cope with celibacy. | |
However, he had also recently sparked controversy when he locked horns with the Scottish government over its plans to enshrine same-sex marriage in law by 2015. | |
A year ago the cardinal put on record his view that gay marriage was a "grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right". | |
Born in Ballycastle, County Antrim, Northern Ireland in 1938, the primary school-aged Keith Michael Patrick O'Brien travelled with his family over the Irish Sea to Clydebank. | |
He was still a young man when his calling to the priesthood came in the late 1950s after he had gained a bachelor of science degree in chemistry and mathematics from Edinburgh University. | |
Cardinal O'Brien studied for his vocation at St Andrew's College, Drygrange, Roxburghshire, and was ordained on 3 April 1965, a few weeks after his 26th birthday. | |
On 5 August 1985, Cardinal O'Brien was ordained Archbishop of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh. |