VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of an Irish Catholic bishop criticized in a recent government report on clerical sex abuse.

The Vatican announced on Thursday (April 22) that Bishop James Moriarty of Kildare and Leighlin had stepped down in accordance with a church law requiring the resignation of a “bishop who has become less able to fulfill his office because of ill health or some other grave cause.”

Moriarty was one of a number of church leaders criticized in last November’s Murphy Commission report, which found a decades-long pattern of clerical physical and sex abuse that had been covered up by the Archdiocese of Dublin, at times with the collusion of the Irish police.

When he offered his resignation last December, Moriarty publicly apologized to “all the survivors and their families,” but also noted that he had served as an auxiliary bishop of Dublin “prior to when correct child protection policies and procedures were implemented.”

Moriarty is one of four present or former auxiliary bishops of Dublin who have offered to resign in response to criticisms in the Murphy Report. But so far, Pope Benedict has accepted only one other of those resignations, that of Bishop Donal B. Murray of Limerick.

Also on Thursday, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, leader of the Catholics of England and Wales, apologized on behalf of his bishops to victims of pedophile priests.

“We express our heartfelt apology and deep sorrow to those who have suffered abuse,” Nichols wrote. “We ask their pardon, and the pardon of God for these terrible deeds done in our midst. There can be no excuses.”

Nichols added that English and Welsh bishops “are committed to continuing the work of safeguarding (against abuse), and are determined to maintain openness and transparency, in close co-operation with the statutory authorities in our countries.”

Controversy over pedophile priests could disrupt Pope Benedict’s planned September visit to Britain, where critics have threatened protests and even an indictment of the pope under international law, for his supposed role in a Vatican-led cover up of clerical sex abusers.