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Cardinal Peter Appiah Turkson has reacted to reports that he had resigned from his Vatican position.

It may be recalled that social media and several news outlets were awash with reports of his resignation.

"In Vatican mandates of Office-Heads expire at death/resignation of Pope or expiry of 5yr term of office. One surrenders mandate for Pope/new Pope to renew/extend mandate or reassign. Turkson surrendered in 2013 Francis renewed 5yr mandate in 2016. Now must await new action of Pope!" Cardinal Turkson reacted last year.

However, speaking in an interview on Accra-based Asaase radio, Turkson, 73 said his tweet was misconstrued and that he has not resigned.

“Here in the Vatican, every position is given for five years and at the end of the five years, either the term is extended, renewed or one is reassigned to some other position. I left Ghana in 2010, which means I have been here [for] eleven years, which means I’ve done two terms of five years.

At the end of the set of five years, my mandate was slightly modified and extended. When I came here, I was to take charge of an office called Justice and Peace, at the end of five years it had a merger. Three other offices were joined with our office and that became the second set of five years and this happened in August 2016.

So 2021 is the end of the second set of five years. So at the end of all of these years, you notified the Pope that your five years are up, to enable him to take a decision”.

"... So that’s just what happened. Why this was seen and interpreted as resignation beats my imagination and as a result of that, I tweeted to explain all of this but people took things the way they wanted to take it. There was nothing to get upset or get worried about” he explained.