Report: Pope Francis ordered Cardinal Müller to dismiss three priests from doctrinal office

ROME
LifeSite News

Jan Bentz

ANALYSIS

ROME, January 3, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — A well-informed Vatican analyst has reported that over Christmas Pope Francis personally ordered three priests to be dismissed from their duties in the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith.

According to Vaticanist Marco Tosatti, Pope Francis ordered Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, prefect of the congregation, to dismiss the priests because of an unknown incident. Maike Hickson, writing for OnePeterFive, discovered that the three priests are of Slovakian-American, French, and Mexican nationality.

Tosatti reported, as translated by Hickson:

The head of a dicastery has received the order to remove three of his employees (all of whom have worked there for a long time), and it was without any explanation. He [the Prefect] received these official letters: “….I request that you please dismiss ….” The order was: send him [each of them] back into his diocese of origin or to the Religious Family to which he belongs. He [the Prefect of the Congregation] was very perplexed because it was about three excellent priests who are among the most capable professionally. He first avoided obeying and several times asked for an audience with the pope. He had to wait because that meeting was postponed several times. Finally, he was received in an audience. And he said: “Your Holiness, I have received these letters, but I did not do anything because these persons are among the best of my dicastery… what did they do?” The answer was, as follows: “And I am the pope, I do not need to give reasons for any of my decisions. I have decided that they have to leave and they have to leave.” He got up and stretched out his hand in order to indicate that the audience was at an end. On 31 December, two of the three [men] will leave the dicastery in which they have worked for years, and without knowing the why. For the third, there seems to be a certain delay. But then, there is another implication which, if true, would be even more unpleasant. One of the two had freely spoken about certain decisions of the pope – perhaps a little bit too much. A certain person – a friend of a close collaborator of the pope – heard this disclosure and passed it on. The victim received then a very harsh telephone call from Number One [i.e., the pope]. And then soon came the dismissal.

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