Cardinal Cristóbal López Romero has informed the Catholics of Rabat that he will submit his resignation upon turning 75 in May 2027, and that he is still awaiting a hearing from the Dicastery for Evangelization in the investigation concerning him. Both statements appear in a document dated September 12, which the archbishop drafted from Spain.
The relevant detail is not the timeline, which follows canonical norms, but the second statement. Two months after the accusations became public and more than a month after the apostolic visitation to his diocese, the cardinal maintains that he has still not been heard by the dicastery handling the case: “I am still awaiting a hearing from the Dicastery for Evangelization of Peoples, to which our diocese belongs, in order to provide explanations in the investigation concerning me.”
According to the information published about the case, his appearance was scheduled for September and was postponed, among other circumstances, due to the death of the father of Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, pro-prefect of the Section for First Evangelization and New Particular Churches of the Dicastery for Evangelization, who traveled to the Philippines. Manuel Tagle Sr. died on September 6, at the age of 96.
An investigation opened since July
The accusations became known in early July, when the AFP agency reported that at least five women attributed to López Romero non-consensual touching and abuse of spiritual authority between 2009 and 2024 in Morocco, Paraguay, and Bolivia. The cardinal then denied having committed “any violence, aggression, or sexual harassment” and withdrew from public pastoral activity.
Read also: Cardinal López Romero steps down from his duties after being accused by five women
None of the accusations have led to any known criminal proceedings in Morocco. The Moroccan Prosecutor’s Office and Police told AFP that no complaint had been filed before the country’s courts.
The apostolic visitation took place between August 5 and 7 and was led by Bishop Hyacinthe Dione and Father Augustin Chako-Yodi. According to the archdiocese itself, the visitors heard members of the Pastoral Coordination Council and the Presbyteral Council, the individuals who had made accusations against the archbishop, and those who requested to testify. They returned to Rome on August 8 to continue the investigation and work on their conclusions.
The report of that visitation has not been published, nor is there any deadline for doing so. In August, the archdiocese also received an apostolic administrator.
Read also: Rabat now has an apostolic administrator while Cardinal López Romero is under investigation
A coadjutor with right of succession
On September 12, the same day López Romero dated his letter, Leo XIV appointed Mario León Dorado, an Oblate missionary and until then apostolic prefect of Western Sahara, as coadjutor archbishop of Rabat.
The figure of the coadjutor carries the right of succession: when López Romero’s resignation is accepted, Dorado will assume governance of the archdiocese without the need for a new appointment.
López Romero himself explained in his message that he must submit his resignation “no later than upon turning 75, in May 2027,” and that at that time León Dorado will become the titular archbishop of Rabat.
The sequence leaves an unusual order. First the succession is secured, then the departure date is set, and in the meantime the procedure that was meant to clarify the facts continues, according to López Romero himself, without the accused having been questioned. If the resignation comes in May 2027 and the investigation has not concluded before then, López Romero will have left the governance of Rabat without any public pronouncement from the Holy See on the accusations, and his status as cardinal will not be affected by his departure.
This is the weakness that this type of case continues to show. Departure due to age resolves the governance issue and leaves the question of accountability untouched. Nothing prevents the dicastery from concluding the case afterward, but there is also no publicly known deadline for its conclusion nor any commitment to make the result public.
Neither the Holy See Press Office nor the Dicastery for Evangelization have publicly reported on the specific status of the investigation. The claim that López Romero has still not been heard comes from the cardinal himself; the postponement of his appearance and the circumstances that motivated it have been reported by media outlets following the case. Rome has not publicly confirmed these details.