It's obviously hard to pierce the walls of secrecy surrounding the inner workings of the Vatican, we want to talk about it more tonight with Christiane Amanpour, host of "AMANPOUR", she is in Rome and senior Vatican analyst John Allen, who's also there, he's a senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter.

John, you say the idea of an existence of some sort of network of gay men or gay priests or high officials inside the Vatican, isn't at all improbable but do you believe that's the reason the Pope is resigning?

No, Anderson, I don't, but I think for the most part, you have to take Benedict the XVI at his word, that he is resigning because of his age and because of fatigue. Now on the other hand, I think you have to ask the question of why is he so fatigued? You know and I think at least part of that picture is that he's spent much of the last eight years frustrated. That his efforts to be a teaching Pope to conduct kind of global graduate seminar and the relationship between reason and faith and so on had been hampered by a kind of endless series of crises and controversies and meltdown, some of them coming in from outside and some of them self-inflicted, so I think that is indeed part of the calculus, but fundamentally I don't think there are  some deep, dark secret. I think this one of those cases in terms that what you see is what you get.

John, what is known exactly about O'Brien? The allegations I've heard are a number of allegations apparently made by some current priests and even I believe one former priest of inappropriate efforts to have some sort of relationship or make some sort of pass at these people when they were priests. And this is a guy who when the British government was considering, you know, gay marriage came out vehemently against it, saying, and I quote, "Their attempt to redefine reality is given a polite hearing, their madness is indulged, their proposal represents a grotesque version of universally accepted human rights." I mean if this guy was, in fact, making advances at other male priests, the level of hypocrisy is great.

Well, you were right, I mean it is, it almost defies belief that someone would be leading such a double life and yet taking such a horrible lie in public, Now, of course, it is important to say the Cardinal O'Brien has firmly denied these charges. He's taken legal counsel, and he's, he's hired a lawyer to help him respond to these charges. And so as the story plays out, it remains to be seen how much fire there is beneath the smoke, I think what's relevant for the Vatican at the moment is that this has resurrected the drum beat of criticism that it has faced over the years that its sort of moral preaching to the world about sexual rectitude in some case, at least not matched on the ground by the behavior of some its clergy.