Leo XIV forces out 21 bishops in 15 months as Pontiff
Most of the bishops’ early resignations are blurred by the Catholic Church’s characteristic opacity when dealing with clergy sexual abuse.
In his last two years in office, Pope Francis forced out 36 bishops. Overall, Francis forced out a total of at least 87 bishops, including other similar disciplinary measures.
In his first 15 months in office, Leo XIV outpaced his predecessor’s rate of early bishops resignations, a proxy to gauge the scale of sexual abuse and other issues in Catholicism.
By Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez
The early resignation of bishops remains one of the few relatively easy-to-spot “symptoms” of structural trouble in any given Catholic diocese, as the adage goes: “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
Even if up until now a bishop in the Catholic Church still holds an almost unchecked power in his diocese, its patrimony, and symbolic capital, before 1966, episcopal appointments were virtually for life. Following the Second …