Catholic World News News Feature

Welsh Archbishop's Controversial Naming Of Late Priest October 11, 2001

CARDIFF, Wales, Oct 11, 01 (CWNews.com) - Embattled Archbishop John Aloysius Ward of Cardiff has become embroiled in another controversy, having described a dead priest as "a raving homosexual" in a recent newspaper interview.

Archbishop Ward made the comments about the late Father William Lloyd in an interview with The Catholic Herald.

Now Father Lloyd's sister, Lynwen Davies, is considering taking action against the archbishop under Church law. She told The Tablet, "As I understand it, it is possible to denounce Archbishop Ward in Rome for committing what is called a delict against my deceased brother."

One of Father Lloyd's closest friends, Father Ambrose Walsh, who resigned as a canon of Cardiff Cathedral in 1997 over Archbishop Ward's handling of pedophile cases, claims the archbishop was carrying out an "act of calculated revenge."

In an open letter to the archbishop, Father Walsh, now retired, says, "In order to strike at me, you vilified the name of someone you know was greatly loved by me and many others, somebody I had cared for until his untimely death from a brain tumor in 1991, someone whose memory is honored among the people he served as one of your priests."

The letter accuses Archbishop Ward of 18 years of "abuse of power" and of being "unfit for office." It concludes, "Archbishop, please now listen to what your peers, what your superiors in the Vatican, what secular society is saying to you, what the thousands of faithful Catholics in the archdiocese are saying to you ... please have the good grace to understand this and go."

Archbishop Ward first came under fire last year when he ignored the alleged pedophile activities of two of his priests who were later jailed for the offenses.

More recently he has clashed with the Vatican by demanding that he be allowed to return to his office following a sick leave even though Pope John Paul II has appointed a neighboring bishop as administrator of Cardiff Archdiocese with full juridical power.

But Archbishop Ward's latest gaff has led to calls for his resignation from both the priests and people of Cardiff, many of whom have written open letters to the national Catholic press.