Abidjan, 29 December, 2024 / 11:42 pm (ACI Africa).
Pope Francis has appointed Jean-Pierre Cardinal Kutwa, the Archbishop emeritus of the Catholic Archdiocese of Abidjan in Ivory Coast, to serve as Apostolic Administrator “Sede plena” of the country’s Catholic Diocese of Man.
Announced on December 27 by the Apostolic Nuncio in Ivory Coast, Archbishop Mauricio Rueda Beltz, the appointment of Cardinal Kutwa, who turned 79 on December 22, follows a fall out between the Local Ordinary of Man Diocese, Bishop Gaspard Béby Gnéba, and the Clergy of the Ivorian Catholic Diocese over the former’s directives to the faithful to denounce the latter’s infidelity to their Priestly vocation and ministry.
"Any lay faithful who knows that a priest is not faithful to his celibacy, that he has a wife or a child, that he has committed sexual abuse or economic crimes, must have the courage to denounce him to the bishop," Bishop Gnéba was quoted as saying in a 4 January 2024 letter that he reportedly described as "urgent, important and necessary".
Remaining silent about such errant Clergy constitutes a “sin of complicity”, the Ivorian Catholic Bishop, who has been at the helm of Man Diocese since his Episcopal Consecration in March 2008 is further quoted as saying, and referred to the Holy Father, who he said “speaks of zero tolerance for these priests."
Following the fall out, the Vatican commissioned an Apostolic visitation to the Ivorian Episcopal See, which Archbishop Roger Houngbédji of Benin’s Catholic Archdiocese of Cotonou conducted from August 20-24.
