US Bishop resigns over ‘inappropriate conduct’ with minor, Vatican says

Salazar was most recently the vicar for the Office of Ethnic Ministries of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles

A Los Angeles bishop has resigned earlier this week following allegations of “inappropriate conduct” with a minor during the 1990s.

Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Monsignor Alexander Salazar on Wednesday, Vatican officials said

The Holy See announced the resignation in a one-line statement. It is comes on the heels of a series of misconduct allegations brought against Catholic bishops this year.

Jose Gomez, the archbishop of Los Angeles, said Mr Salazar has “consistently denied any wrongdoing.” The archbishop told the LA Times he was first aware of the sexual abuse claims against Mr Salazar, 69, in 2005. Mr Gomez said that prosecutors declined to bring charges against Mr Salazar, but that the archdiocese forwarded the misconduct complaint to the Vatican office handling sexual abuse cases.

In response, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith imposed precautionary measures against Mr Salazar. After the archdiocese’s independent review board completed its investigation, it found the allegations brought against Mr Salazar to be credible.

“These decisions have been made out of deep concern for the healing and reconciliation of abuse victims and for the good of the church’s mission,” Mr Gomez told the Los Angeles congregation in a letter. “Let us continue to stay close to the victim survivors of abuse, through our prayer and our actions.”

The alleged incident, according to Mr Gomez, took place when Mr Salazar was a parish priest in the 1990s. He said the the sexual abuse claim was never brought directly to the archdiocese.

Mr Salazar’s resignation comes in a year that has seen a number of sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church

In July, Pope Francis removed Theodore McCarrick, who was the retired archbishop for Washington, DC, as a cardinal after an church-sponsored investigation found an allegation that he groped a minor in the 1970s was credible. Following that discovery, several seminarians said he had pressured them to engage in sexual relations with him.

Mr McCarrick has repeatedly denied these allegations.

The cases involving Mr McCarrick, and now Mr Salazar, reveal potential loopholes in how the Catholic Church handles sexual misconduct claims brought against bishops, as they only answer to the Pope,