Pope Leo XIV pressured a French bishop to step down over his “relationships with women”, according to the Vatican, with the defrocked clergyman hitting back today at the “disgusting” situation.

When announcing his resignation as the Bishop of Verdun in late September, Jean-Paul Gusching had hinted that health issues lay behind the decision to hang up his crosier.

But the Holy See’s embassy to France yesterday revealed that those were but “one element” behind that decision, with a preliminary canonical investigation into his behaviour under way and the civil courts alerted to the matter.

In an unusual intervention from the Apostolic Nunciature in Paris, the embassy said that after it had alerted the Pontiff to the matter, Gusching committed “to avoid in future any behaviour towards women that could be interpreted as contrary to his holy vows”.

But “given the ongoing nature of the situation, the Holy Father solicited and accepted his resignation ... which took effect on September 27”, the Nunciature added.

A day after the embassy’s statement came to light, Gusching admitted to having a relationship which lasted “from around 2015 to 2022”.

The ex-bishop said that was “the only affair” he had committed, insisting that the “disgusting” push for his resignation was motivated by “jealousies”.

“They want my head,” the ex-bishop told the local Journal de L’Est republicain paper in an interview published today.

Asked whether the relationship was consensual, Gusching said: “Yes, she was a woman of age”.

The Vatican has ordered Gusching to “refrain from any liturgical celebrations and public pastoral activities”.

Catholic bishops are strictly forbidden from having any sexual relationships, though the Church has been rocked in recent decades by a litany of child sex abuse scandals.

-Agence France-Presse