Honduran bishop, 57, in unexplained resignation

Bishop Juan José Pineda Fasquelle, aged 57, has recently faced allegations of sexual and financial misconduct although when making the announcement today the Vatican gave no reasons as to why his resignation was accepted. 

At the end of last year the Italian magazine L’Espresso reported that the Pope had sent Argentine Bishop Jorge Pedro Casaretto to investigate alleged financial improprieties in the Archdiocese of Tegucigalpa with allegations that Bishop Pineda mismanaged funds. 

The National Catholic Register later reported that two former seminarians in Honduras alleged the bishop made unwanted sexual advances to them while steps had been taken to keep the bishop away from the seminary.  

Cardinal Rodriguez is the co-ordinator of the Pope’s advisory Council of Cardinals and considered one of Francis’s most trusted advisers. L’Espresso’s report said he had received receiving hundreds of thousands of US dollars from the Catholic University of Honduras, of which he is Chancellor, and that he oversaw a disastrous $1.2 million investment in London. 

The cardinal has strongly denied any wrongdoing, explaining that money received from the university was to pay for seminarians' tuition, renovating and building churches and to help priests in rural parishes or those clergy with no livelihood. He also revealed that, following the L’Espresso report, the Pope called him to say: “I am sorry for all the evil they have done against you, but do not worry.”

Cardinal Rodriguez has recently undertaken treatment for prostate cancer, and during his spell of ill health Bishop Pineda is understood to have been in day-to-day charge of overseeing the archdiocese. 

While Bishop Pineda is still 18 years away from the episcopal retirement age Canon Law states that a bishop can offer to stand down when he is unable to carry out his duties due to “ill health or some other grave cause.”