Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of a Polish bishop after a priest in his diocese organized a s3x party involving a male prostitute at his flat.
While the Vatican didn’t give a reason for why Bishop Grzegorz Kaszak, 59, was resigning as head of the diocese of Sosnowiec, in southwestern Poland, his diocese was featured in headlines across the world after one of his priests, Father Tomasz Zmarzły, was placed under investigation for an alleged gay orgy gone wrong.
It was reported that a man overdosed on erectile dysfunction pills at the sex party which was organized by Father Tomasz at his flat in Dabrowa Gornicza. He was also accused of stopping paramedics from entering his flat to save the man who had overdosed on erectile dysfunction pills at the sex party.
Waldemar Lubniewski, a spokesperson for the District Prosecutor’s Office in Sosnowiec, said the investigation focused on a ‘failure to provide assistance to a person in a situation that poses an immediate threat of loss of life or serious damage to health.’
In a statement published on Tuesday, Kaszak said he had asked the pope to let him resign in a letter sent to him on September 29.
He thanked the priests and nuns of his diocese and asked ‘everyone to forgive my human limitations.’
Kaszak was appointed bishop in 2009 by then-Pope Benedict XVI, after having served briefly as a top official in the Vatican’s family office.
The scandal made headlines in Poland, with the event further harming the image of the church which was the Roman Catholic homeland of St. John Paul II.
The alleged orgy wasn’t the first incident involving clergy in the diocese to make headlines.
In 2010, the then-acting rector of the Sosnowiec seminary allegedly got into a scuffle at a gay club but was allowed to remain in his job for over a year even after the case was publicised by Polish media.
The Holy See finally intervened and dissolved the seminary altogether, according to the PAP news agency.
