Pontiff Pulls Plug on Priest in Oz

PJ Media
January 6, 2015

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2015/01/06/pontiff-pulls-plug-on-priest-in-oz/

[Lest you think the Pope is a closet Lefty:]

An Australian priest who supports the ordination of women has been excommunicated by Pope Francis.

In the first such excommunication since the new pontiff took office Fr Greg Reynolds was dismissed in a letter from the Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart, which stated that “the decision by Pope Francis to dismiss Fr Reynolds from the clerical state and to declare his automatic excommunication has been made because of his public teaching on the ordination of women contrary to the teaching of the Church and his public celebration of the Eucharist when he did not hold faculties to act publicly as a priest.”

Archbishop Hart also told other priests in the archdiocese by letter that Fr Reynolds’s excommunication was “because of his public teaching on the ordination of women”, which are grounds for automatic excommunication. Fr Reynolds is also a supporter of same-sex marriage and has attended rallies in favour of changing the definition of marriage. He has even reportedly presided at same-sex ceremonies.

It remains to be seen whether the first Jesuit pope will issue an encyclical about alleged “climate change,” as my friend Dennis Prager thinks he will. But no doubt the Pope has just seriously disappointed some of the secularists who think he is secretly one of them.