Top Vatican official resigns, denies allegations of advances

VATICAN CITY (AP) - A top Vatican official has resigned after a former nun from his community publicly accused him of making sexual advances during confession, the Vatican said Tuesday.

The Vatican said that the Rev. Hermann Geissler denies the allegation and reserves the right to a civil suit.

Geissler, who said he wants the church to continue its investigation of the woman's allegations, said he was resigning "to limit the damage already done" to the Vatican's Congregation of the Faith office, the Vatican office that handles sex abuse cases and where he was chief of staff.

Doris Wagner, a former nun in Geissler's German order known as "the Work," publicly accused Geissler at a conference on women and clergy sexual abuse that was held in Rome in November.

Wagner's allegations come amid a reckoning of religious sisters denouncing sexual abuse and harassment by clergy, an outgrowth of the #MeToo movement and the ongoing clergy sex abuse scandal.

Soliciting sex in a confessional is considered a grave crime in the church, given that the penitent is in a vulnerable state, asking for forgiveness for sin from a priest in a Catholic sacrament.