Vatican City ? The pope has accepted the resignation of Bishop William Houck of the Jackson, Miss., diocese, for reasons of age, the Vatican said Friday.

Houck will be 77 in June. The Vatican requires bishops to offer their resignation when they turn 75, and it is up to Pope John Paul II to accept or ask the bishop to stay on.

The Jackson diocese was recently slapped with two lawsuits seeking a total of $75 million in connection with the church abuse scandal. Houck said he did not believe the allegations had anything to do with the pope’s accepting his resignation.

Houck told a news conference that he had offered his resignation two years ago, before the lawsuits were launched.

The Vatican said the pope had named Monsignor Joseph Latino, the vicar general of the Houma-Thibodaux diocese in Louisiana, as the new bishop of Jackson.

In June, three brothers filed a $48 million lawsuit against the Jackson diocese, accusing it of having ignored sexual abuse by a priest they say took place from 1969-74, when the boys were about 5 to 14 years old.

The suit named the diocese as well as clergymen including Houck and the diocese’ former vicar general, Bernard Law, accusing them of civil contempt and fraud for failure to report the alleged abuse.

Law, now a cardinal, resigned last month as head of the Boston archdiocese, which has been the focal point of the sex abuse scandal engulfing the Roman Catholic Church in America.

In July, two men filed a $27 million lawsuit against the diocese, saying they were abused by Catholic priests and accusing the church of covering up their abuse. Houck and Law were named in that suit as well.