UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
by Joshua J. McElwee | Nov. 30, 2012
The leaders of one of the largest groups of Catholic sisters in the western hemisphere have expressed support for a U.S. priest dismissed by the Vatican for his backing of women’s ordination.
The leadership team of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas is “saddened and disturbed” by the Vatican move, made by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith against Roy Bourgeois, they wrote in a statement Wednesday.
Bourgeois, widely known for his work calling attention to injustices in Latin America, had been a member of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, a U.S. missionary society, for 45 years. The Vatican congregation dismissed him from the society on Oct. 4, the order announced in a press release Nov. 19.
The dismissal drew criticism from a former head of the U.S. missionary order, who said in an interview it represented interference “with the integrity of the society.”
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