Rabat: a successor to Cardinal López Romero, under investigation for abuse

Pope Leo XIV has named the Spanish priest Mario León Dorado coadjutor archbishop of the Archdiocese of Rabat, a charge that carries an automatic right of succession. The appointment was made public by a communiqué of the Holy See on Saturday 12 September. It designates, in effect, the successor to Cardinal Cristóbal López Romero, a 74-year-old Salesian, who stepped back from his see in July after accusations of sexual violence.

Aged 52, born in Madrid, a member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the coadjutor has exercised his ministry in the Western Sahara for nearly twenty-five years. At least five adult women accuse the cardinal of sexual violence and inappropriate behaviour. The canonical complaint speaks of "inappropriate" physical contact, of "particularly intense and prolonged embraces," and of an attempt to approach for a kiss. At this stage no complaint has been filed before the Moroccan courts, according to the prosecutor's office and the police. In early August two investigators sent by the Dicastery for Evangelisation, a priest and a bishop, travelled to Rabat to hear alleged victims and members of the diocese.

The framing of this replacement is disputed. According to one account, the pope is said to have hastened the cardinal's removal, following on from a suspension said to have been decided on 1 August and the handing over of the diocese to Mario León Dorado as apostolic administrator "sede plena." The cardinal, for his part, in a letter published the same Saturday, dissociates the coming of the coadjutor from the inquiry: he states that he had raised the appointment of a coadjutor with Pope Francis as early as the end of 2024, who is said to have accepted the idea, and then renewed the request to Leo XIV in October 2025.

He says he receives this appointment "with great joy and immense gratitude." He denies having "committed any aggression or violence or sexual harassment." His mandate at the head of Rabat is in any case due to end at his 75th birthday, in May 2027. We report these versions as contested and do not settle between them.

What tradition teaches

The episcopate does not admit of mediocrity. "It behoveth therefore a bishop to be blameless," teaches Saint Paul, "sober, prudent... chaste" (First Epistle to Timothy, III, 2). The Catechism of the Council of Trent, treating of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, recalls the holiness demanded of those who handle holy things and preside over the people of God. The sixth commandment binds all the faithful to purity, and the clergy first of all, by reason of their state. And the Lord pronounced upon scandal a word without appeal: "It were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea" (Gospel according to St. Matthew, XVIII, 6).

The measure

We measure the act, not the guilt of a man: no tribunal has established it, and the man himself denies it. Two truths of the perennial doctrine hold together. The first: a bishop must be above all reproach; grave and public accusations, even before any proof, wound the charge and the flock, and the Church has always had the duty to put away scandal and to protect souls. The inquiry and the naming of a successor answer to that duty.

The second: justice forbids condemning without proof; tradition holds to "in dubio pro reo," and the eighth commandment forbids calumny as much as the stifling of the truth. That the very account of the departure is disputed, a succession sought on one side, an eviction on the other, shows how far scandal cracks even the truth it touches. The remedy tradition asks is neither presumption nor silence, but the truth established and rendered to all.

What this means for the faithful

The faithful formed in tradition is not scandalised that the Church judges its pastors; he is edified by it, for it is the sign that the charge is held to be holy. He prays for the women who bring the complaint as for the accused, he awaits the truth without prejudging it, and he holds to the faith as the Church has always taught it. The dignity of the episcopate does not depend on the fidelity of a man, but on the Christ who instituted it.

Sources. Holy Scripture: First Epistle to Timothy, III, 2; Gospel according to St. Matthew, XVIII, 6 (Douay-Rheims, from the Vulgate). Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the Sacrament of Holy Orders and the sixth commandment.