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Catholic World News News Feature

Zimbabwe archbishop admits adultery March 25, 2008

A Zimbabwean archbishop has admitted the accuracy of adultery charges that prompted his resignation last year.

Archbishop Pius Ncube stepped down from his post as Archbishop of Bulawayo after local television stations broadcast what they said were videotapes of the prelate engaged in an affair with his secretary, a married woman.

At the time, the archbishop denied the adultery charges, saying that they were part of a campaign by President Robert Mugabe to discredit him. Archbishop Ncube had been a leading critic of Mugabe's regime, going so far as to call for the overthrow of the government.

The adultery charges, which received prominent coverage in the state-owned media, did appear to be a concerted campaign to smear the archbishop, and the bishops' conference of Zimbabwe rallied to Ncube's defense, condemning the charges as "outrageous and utterly deplorable."

However, in September 2007 the archbishop submitted his resignation, and the Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI had accepted it under canon 401-2 of the Code of Canon Law, which provides for the early resignation of a bishop in case of illness or "some other grave reason."

Archbishop Ncube said that he had stepped down to curb a publicity campaign which he saw as an attack against the Church and "to spare my fellow bishops and the body of the Church any further attacks." But media reports in Zimbabwe suggested that Vatican officials had ordered the archbishop to resign-- perhaps because Church leaders were convinced the adultery charges were accurate.

Now, in an interview broadcast by Frontier Africa TV, the archbishop has admitted, "It is true."

"I do admit that I did fail in keeping God's commandment with regard to adultery," the archbishop confessed on the television program, which was recorded last November but aired over Easter weekend. "I would like to apologise that so many of you were praying for me, for the fact that so many of you standing with me in fact suffered so much."