Priest ousted for support of women’s ordination

A long-running struggle between Catholic authorities and Roy Bourgeois over his support for ordaining women has ended with Bourgeois’s dismissal from the priesthood and his religious order, the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers.

A statement from Maryknoll on November 19 confirmed that the Vatican’s office for orthodoxy, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, laicized Bourgeois in October.

The move stems from Bourgeois’s participation in an August 2008 ordination rite in Lexington, Kentucky, for Janice Sevre-Duszynska. The ceremony was not recognized by the Vatican and took place under the auspices of a group called Roman Catholic Womanpriests, which rejects the church’s teaching on the all-male priesthood.