The Vatican has laicised an internationally renowned pro-life activist priest for “blasphemous communications on social media”.
Fr Frank Pavone, national director of the Florida-based Priests for Life group, was also dismissed from the clerical state because of his “persistent disobedience of the lawful instructions of his diocesan bishop”.
The Dicastery of the Clergy reached a decision early last month and has also concluded that there is “no possibility of appeal”.
A letter to the U.S. bishop from Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the Papal Nuncio to the United States, said that Fr Pavone was given “ample opportunity to defend himself in the canonical proceedings, and he was also given multiple opportunities to submit himself to the authority of his diocesan bishop”.
“It was determined that Father Pavone had no reasonable justification for his actions,” said the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Catholic News Agency.
The communication from Archbishop Pierre does not specify the actions that led to Pavone’s dismissal or name the bishop he disobeyed, according to CNA.
Pavone did famously, however, make a video of an aborted baby on what looked like an altar in support of the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.
Significantly the letter from Archbishop Pierre refers to him as Mr Pavone and also makes clear that Priests for Life is not a Catholic organisation.
Pavone, 63, insists however that he has not received notification from the Vatican, that he is a priest in good standing and that he is continuing to exercise his ministry “in full communion with the Church”.
The priest hosted the EWTN show “Defending Life” for a number of years until his permission to appear on the network was revoked by the Bishop of Amarillo, Texas, the diocese in which he was incardinated in 2005. Pavone then transferred to another diocese, which was not named in reports.
The intervention of the bishop to halt his broadcasts was the latest of a number of clashes with members of the U.S. hierarchy over 20 years.
On his website, Pavone wrote: “We all expect that the pro-abortion groups, like Planned Parenthood, will target, harass and try to intimidate us. And they do try.
“But when such treatment comes from bishops and other Church authorities — which it increasingly does — it’s particularly deplorable,” he added.
“Instead of supporting and encouraging the pro-life work of the Church, some of these men try to obstruct and hinder it, and abuse their authority to try to intimidate priests and laity who make ending abortion the top priority of our lives.”
Besides his leadership of Priests for Life, Pavone has also been an avid and active supporter of former U.S. President Trump, serving as an advisory board member of a group called Catholics for Trump, possibly in contravention of The Code of Canon Law which forbids priests from active roles in political parties.
In November 2016, Pavone filmed a video in support for Mr Trump’s presidential campaign featuring the body of an aborted baby laid on what appeared to be an altar, which infuriated some Catholic bishops.
Pavone answered their criticism by saying that the baby was laid “on a table in our office, not a consecrated altar in a chapel”.
“That table, sometimes used for Mass, was also the place where all my videos in this educational series of election broadcasts were made,” he said at the time. “In retrospect, I should have made the baby video in a different location so as to avoid any confusion to begin with.”
Pavone later stepped down from the two positions with Trump’s re-election campaign in 2020 at the request of American bishops.
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