The Archbishop of Cordoba does not specify what the reported conduct consisted of.
The Archbishop of Córdoba (Argentina) made public on Friday, October 2, a brief statement in which he reports that Monsignor Ricardo Orlando Seirutti, until now auxiliary bishop and vicar general of the archdiocese, has been deprived of both offices as a result of a canonical judicial process ordered by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and substantiated in the Interdiocesan Court of Buenos Aires.
According to the note, signed by the Archdiocesan Communication Office, the case was opened following the allegations of “two adults” who argued against the prelate “behaviors improper from his episcopal ministry.”
The indictment led the Roman Dicastery to order the process, concluded “in recent weeks” with an opinion that imposes two penalties: the deprivation of the office of auxiliary bishop and the other offices it occupied, and the prohibition, for five years, of receiving formal appointments or new offices and of administering the sacrament of penance.
Keep the Mass and the other sacraments
The statement underlines that Monsignor Seirutti “retains the power to celebrate Mass and administer other sacraments,” with the sole exception of confession. The text expressly quotes canon 976 of the Code of Canon Law, which states that any priest, although he lacks the power to confess, validly and lawfully acquits a penitent in danger of death. The mention makes it clear, therefore, that the prohibition of confessing does not reach that supposed extreme.
The note concludes with a formula already common in this type of statement: “We offer our closeness and forgiveness to the people affected, while renewing the commitment to continue working so that all the actions of our particular Church are in accordance with the Gospel.”
What the Communiqué is silent
The text of the Archbishopric is fixed in details and leaves the essential questions unanswered. It does not specify the nature of the “improper behaviors”, does not indicate when the complaints were filed or when the process was opened, does not clarify if the complainants were vulnerable or if they had any relationship of dependence with the bishop, and also does not mention whether there is any complaint before the Argentine civil justice.
Some relevant data are released from the release. First, whistleblowers are of legal age, which rules out a child abuse case. Secondly, the direct intervention of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which ordered a judicial process and not a mere administrative procedure, points to facts of a certain gravity. And thirdly, the sentences imposed are relatively contained: Seirutti has not been reduced to the lay state or removed from the episcopal character, but has been removed from the government of the archdiocese and the confessional for a five-year period.
At the close of this information, the Holy See Press Room had not published any communication on the case, so that the only official source remains the note of the Archbishopric of Cordoba, collected by Argentine media such as Cadena 3.
A bishop of discreet profile, appointed by Francis
Ricardo Orlando Seirutti was born in Buenos Aires on July 31, 1956, and moved as a child with his family to Alta Gracia, in the province of Córdoba. Before entering the seminar he studied Chemical Sciences, Theater and Teaching English at the National University of Córdoba and worked for a time in a factory, experience in which, according to his official biography, he discovered his vocation.
He entered the Major Seminary of Our Lady of Loreto in 1981 and was ordained a priest on October 6, 1988 in Alta Gracia.
His priestly career was marked by youth and vocational pastoral care: he was a trainer of the Minor Seminary of Jesus Maria, professor of Philosophy and Sacred Sciences in the Major Seminary, advisor of the Youth Pastoral and member of the Vocational Pastoral team of the archdiocese, chaplain of the Conceptionist Sisters and the Private Hospital of Córdoba.
Since 2007 he was parish priest of St. John the Evangelist, in the capital of Cordoba, and Episcopal vicar for the Lay Movements and Associations.
Pope Francis appointed him titular bishop of Bela and auxiliary of Córdoba on November 7, 2015, according to the Argentine Episcopal Conference. He received episcopal ordination on December 18 of that year in the Cordoba cathedral from the hands of the then Archbishop Carlos Ñáñez, with the auxiliary Pedro Torres and the bishop of Oberá, Damian Bitar, his fellow seminary, as co-consecratives.
After the arrival in Córdoba of the Jesuit Ángel Sixto Rossi, archbishop since December 2021 and created a cardinal by Francis in 2023, Seirutti went on to occupy the vicaratia general, the position of greatest confidence of the archbishop in the diocesan government.
In 2023 the Pope appointed two other assistants for the archdiocese, Horacio Álvarez and the Salesian Alejandro Musolino, who now remain as the only assistants of Cardinal Rossi.
Within the Argentine Episcopal Conference, Seirutti was part of the Episcopal Commission for the Lay and Pastoral Family Apostolate and the University Pastoral Commission.
Synod Father at the 2018 Young People’s Synod
His only projection in the universal Church came in October 2018, when he participated in Rome as a synod father in the XV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, dedicated to “young people, faith and vocational discernment”, representing the Argentine episcopate.
In an interview with Vatican News during that assembly, Seirutti defended that young people “want to walk with the Church” because “they are an answer to other young people”, insisted on accompaniment as a central need for youth ministry and regretted the shortage of prepared companions, whether priests, religious or lay people. A speech of Bergoglian tone, in the line of the "Church on the way out", but without leaving the official script of that Synod.
The Seirutti case is in addition to the list of bishops sanctioned by Rome in recent years through canonical criminal proceedings, a path that the Holy See had traditionally reserved for cases of child abuse and that, under the regulations of Vos estis lux mundi, has been extended to adult conduct.
It remains to be seen whether the Argentine justice system intervenes and whether the Holy See offers, as it has been claimed in similar cases, greater transparency about the facts proven.