VATICAN (CNS): Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Angelo Cardinal Becciu as prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, and his renunciation of the rights associated with being a cardinal, the Vatican announced late on September 24.
The 72-year-old cardinal will remain a priest and retired bishop, but will no longer exercise the role of a cardinal, including by serving as a papal adviser, a member of Vatican congregations and councils, and as an elector of a new pope.
The Vatican announcement did not give a reason for the cardinal’s resignation but referred questions to Cardinal Becciu.
The last cardinal to renounce the rights and privileges of being a cardinal was Scotland’s Keith Cardinal O’Brien, former archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, in 2015.
He had resigned as archbishop two years earlier after admitting to sexual misconduct. He did not participate in the 2013 conclave that elected Pope Francis and he died in 2018.
Before Pope Francis named him a cardinal in 2018 and appointed him to head the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, Cardinal Becciu had served for seven years as sostituto, the number three position in the Vatican Secretariat of State.
It was in that position that he was involved in the Vatican’s purchase of a property in London’s posh Chelsea district, a deal that racked up huge debts and has been the subject of several lawsuits.
Born on 2 June 1948, he entered the regional seminary of Sardinia in Cuglieri and moved with the seminary to Cagliari.
He was ordained to the priesthood on 27 August 1972 for Sardinian Diocese of Ozieri.
After ordination, he spent eight years ministering in the diocese, including a period as vice rector of the Ozieri seminary.
Invited to join the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, the school for Vatican diplomats, he earned a degree in canon law in Rome and entered the Vatican diplomatic service in 1984,.
Cardina Becciu served at Vatican embassies and offices in the Central African Republic, Sudan, New Zealand, Liberia, Great Britain, France and, finally, the United States.
In 2001, Pope St. John Paul II named him an archbishop and apostolic nuncio to Angola and to Sao Tome and Principe.
In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI named him nuncio to Cuba, a position he held until 2011, when the pope asked then-Archbishop Becciu to move to the Vatican Secretariat of State.
