Word: bishops
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...baby scandal. According to a paternity suit filed in Paraguay last week, Fernando Lugo was 48 years old when, a decade ago, he began an amorous relationship with a 16-year-old girl, Viviana Carrillo, in the impoverished San Pedro province. At the time Lugo was a Roman Catholic bishop - and Carrillo was preparing for the sacrament of confirmation. Lugo denies that the affair began when Carrillo was a minor. But she says she was "seduced by the way he talked, his pretty words, his beautiful expressions," according to the suit, "and by his promises that he would resign...
Lugo did eventually resign as bishop of San Pedro - but just months before leaving the priesthood, he conceived a child with Carrillo in 2006, when she was 24. (The boy, Guillermo, turns 2 next month.) A year ago Lugo was elected President of Paraguay. Now, in response to the lawsuit, Lugo has come clean about the affair. "Here and now, before people and my conscience, I declare with absolute honesty and a sense of duty and transparency," the President said on Monday, "that there was a relationship with Viviana Carrillo." He added, "I assume all responsibilities, and I recognize that...
...Paraguayans wanted to observe the first anniversary of his historic election. Lugo, 57, is Paraguay's Barack Obama, the outsider agent of change who pledged to lead the South American nation out of its benighted past. The leftist former priest, who had worked among Paraguay's poorest as a bishop, toppled the seemingly omnipotent Colorado Party, the political base of the country's 19th and 20th century dictators like General Alfredo Stroessner. Lugo has since pushed for essential measures like land reform. What Paraguay is getting instead, at least for the moment, is "a telenovela," says respected investigative journalist Mabel...
...claim that the sexual relationship between Lugo and Carrillo began when she was a minor is true, something the President and his lawyer adamantly deny. It's one thing for a celibate parish priest to father children and try to keep it under wraps; but when it involves a bishop, it casts a spotlight on the church hierarchy. Although the Vatican had accepted Lugo's resignation as bishop, it refused to recognize his exit from the priesthood until after he was elected President...
...Nick Baines, the Bishop of Croydon, says such notation makes little difference. "Sticking John Hunt's note in the register is not 'de-anything,'" he wrote on his blog. "It is simply a note in a register that has no effect whatsoever other than to make him feel better that he has been heard." And, officials at the Church of England say, allowing such notation is not the Church's official policy because true renunciation can only take place between an individual...