Buenos Aires, Argentina, Aug 25, 2005 / 22:00 pm
In a six-paragraph letter sent to the Permanent Committee of the Argentine Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Juan Carlos Maccarone, who resigned this week after a video tape surfaced of the bishop engaged in a homosexual act with a 23 year-old man, apologized for the incident and said extortion was behind the scandal.
Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires read the letter aloud to the 30 bishops that make up the Committee.
“I owe you all much,” Bishop Maccarone wrote. “I wish to say to you as brothers that despite this incident, my life has not been a lie. I have always obeyed the Church since my days as a seminarian and I have accomplished things I never imagined for my priestly life,” he said.
“Out of obedience,” the letter continues, “I accepted the episcopate and the different destinations in which I was to exercise it. Likewise I accepted without question the extraordinary tasks that the bishops entrusted to me.”