UNITED STATES
Seattle PI
By Joel Connelly
He is the supreme pontiff and ultimate authority in the Roman Catholic Church, but Pope Francis has formalized his firing power.
Under a new Vatican edict, when he considers it “necessary,” the pope can ask a bishop to resign.
Pope Francis has already removed bishop.
Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst was sent packing from his post in Limberg, Germany, after spending millions in luxury renovations to his residence and diocesan headquarters. He was nicknamed the “bishop of Bling.”
Paraguayan Bishop Rogelio Livieres Plano was removed after offering a pastoral home to a Pennsylvania priest accused of sexual abuse and delivering personal denunciations of his fellow bishops in the South American nation.
Francis has also taken ultraconservative American Cardinal Raymond Burke off the Congregation of Bishops, which recommends new appointments to the hierarchy and is apparently getting ready to send Burke packing from his job as head of the Vatican’s highest court.
Burke has fired back with critical statements. “At this very critical moment, there is a strong sense that the church is like a ship without a rudder,” he said last month.
In Vatican-ese, the new edict defines the Holy See’s firing power:
“In some particular circumstances, the competent authority can consider it necessary to ask a bishop to present his resignation from pastoral office, after having made known the reasons for the request and listening carefully to the reasons, in fraternal dialogues.”
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