IRELAND
Limerick Leader
THE REDEMPTORISTS have come out in support of the former head of the order in Limerick who says he is at risk of excommunication if he does not recant his liberal views.
Fr Tony Flannery, who is a former rector of the Redemptorists on Mount St Alphonsus, has been barred from ministry since last year and says he now faces being dismissed from his order outright.
As an author, Fr Flannery has long questioned official church teaching on women priests, clerical celibacy, homosexuality and other issues. But he has written this week of his belief that it was his role in setting up the Association of Catholic Priests, an independent grouping of clerics, in 2010 that brought him to the attention of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the powerful Vatican office formerly headed up by Pope Benedict XVI.
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