IRELAND
Irish Independent
IT IS a rare thing for a Pope to directly and summarily dismiss a priest from the clerical state. It will only happen in the most extreme and serious circumstances.
Usually, a priest will only be dismissed - "defrocked" to use the popular term - after he is tried by an ecclesiastical court in his own diocese.
If he is found guilty of the offence in question, and it could easily be an offence that has nothing to do with civil law, for example, breaking the seal of the confessional, he can appeal the decision to Rome.
All of this can takes years.
However, under procedures introduced by the Vatican in 2001, a Bishop can now short-circuit this process by sending a particularly serious case directly to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).