A Roman Catholic Cardinal whose sex scandal precluded him from voting for the new pope is now leaving the country he grew up in.

The Vatican said that with the Pope's approval Cardinal Keith O'Brien would leave Scotland “for the purpose of spiritual renewal, prayer and penance”.

Last February and just as the College of Cardinals was making plans to get together and elect a replacement for the retiring Pope Benedict, three priests and a former priest came forward with allegations of improper conduct back in the 1980s.

Just a few months earlier, O'Brien had strongly opposed gay marriage as a “grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right”.  The Scottish Government plans to enshrine Marriage Equality into law by 2015.

O’Brien was born in County Antrim in Northern Ireland, and went with his family across the Irish Sea to Clydebank as a young boy.