Pope Francis forces out of office 30 bishops in two years

The countries with the highest number of bishops forced out of office are the United States, Germany, and France.

Francis forced out a bishop from Brazil after allegations of abuse against seminarians at the time of the abuse.

By Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez

Very quietly, over the last days of 2024, Rome requested the resignation of yet another bishop before its own 75-year-old rule. This time around was one of the most famous bishops of France, the head of the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, Dominique Marie Jean Rey.

The announcement came after bishop Rey went to Rome in early December. There is no official information as to why Pope Francis asked for this early resignation when Rey had a chance to remain, at least theoretically, for at least three more years as bishop of Toulon, a city in Southern France, a bit more than 30 miles or 30 kilometers East of Marseille, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.

It was known for over a year or so that something was not right in Toulon. Back in November 2023, Pope Francis appointed a coadjutor bishop, François Marie Pierre Touvet, who on January 7th became the new head of the diocese. Even before Touvet’s appointment as coadjutor, there were rumors about the many concerns in Rome with Rey’s tenure there.

Rey’s case offers a chance to go over a key feature of the clergy sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church, that of the bishops forced to resign by Rome. By their internal regulations, Catholic bishops must resign at 75. Those who are Cardinals (almost all Cardinals are bishops) have a chance to remain on their posts until they reach 80, and even then, in some very special cases, bishops or Cardinals remain in their posts.

Francis has been adamant on enforcing the 75-year-old rule with most bishops, unlike what was happening in the last years of both John Paul II’s and Benedict XVI’s reigns when a relatively high number of older than 75 clerics remained in their posts, especially those closer to the ruling Pope.

Back in 2023, Los Ángeles Press published a couple of pieces dealing with the bishops forced into resignation before the 75-year-old rule, as a proxy measure of sorts of the clergy sexual abuse crisis. As stated then, one must be extremely cautious when using that measure, since looks can be deceiving. Those stories appear before and after this paragraph.

Disdain as a method

Some dismissive Cardinals as Norberto Rivera Carrera in Mexico City or Juan Sandoval Íñiguez in Guadalajara, reached that line and, despite the evidence against them and the many testimonies of victims mistreated or chastised by them or their associates, there were no real consequences for them.

In Rivera Carrera’s case the only consequence came from the U.S. courts in the state of California, where he testified as to how and why he was sending priests with credible accusations of sexual abuse in Mexico to Los Angeles and other dioceses in the United States. His 2007 deposition is available here at Scribd.

Sandoval remains a constant presence in Mexican Catholic circles, where groups of conservatives still amplify whatever conspiracy theory the former archbishop of Guadalajara is willing to propagate that week, but there have never been actual consequences for his support to notorious predators in Mexico and the U.S.

Despite its limits, going over the reports of early resignations is useful to try to understand what is happening in that church, and where are the “hot spots” of clergy sexual abuse. After all, even in other religious organizations, as the Church of England proves with Justin Welby’s departure, early resignations come as the consequence of mistakes, malfeasance, and even crimes.

As far as it is possible to observe over the last 70 years or so, forced, or early bishops resignations in the Roman Catholic Church fall broadly within four categories. One, that of bishops forced out as a consequence of clergy sexual abuse, whether from them or by priests under their care. The other is that of bishops with some kind of theological difference with Rome that makes it impossible for them to deal with their duties. There are the rare instances of bishops forced out of office because of civil or penal malfeasance not associated with clergy sexual abuse. Finally, the are the REAL cases of extreme illness forcing bishops out of their duties.

It is necessary to insist on the need to distinguish real cases of medical urgency from those where health considerations are just a label to avoid accountability from their misdeeds. It could be that some of them suffer from chronic illness, but that is not the main reason they leave their office.

Stick or carrot

Over the last two years, since March 2023, until the first week of this year, Rome faced a total of 30 cases where, either with a stick or a carrot, bishops have seen their careers ended. Two of them were priests who, for unknown reasons, declined the consecration as such.

One is British priest John Whitehead Christopher. The other is Argentine padre Fabián Alberto Belay. In Christopher’s case, his diocese launched an official probe. Apparently, nothing happened there, and he remains a parish priest. In Belay’s case, there was no probe, only his choice to skip consecration and to remain a parish priest.

Both remain priests in their dioceses of origin, and there is no more information as to why their consecrations never happened.

Of the other 28 bishops whose careers ended before the 75-year limit, Rey’s case is a good example of the early resignation conundrum. Even if up until now nobody has accused bishop Rey of abuse, there are serious doubts about why he was willing to ordain candidates to the priesthood.

The doubts are not mine. They were the reason Rome forced him to stop any ordination at some point at the end of the previous decade. Even if bishops usually have wide jurisdiction over ordinations in their own territory, there are cases where Rome steps up to exert its power when dealing with ordinations.

Rey’s case is not unique in that respect. In Mexico, as one of many possible examples, when the far-right attacked Samuel Ruiz, the former bishop of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, they did so by raising questions about his decision to ordain an unusual number of permanent deacons who, up until today, remain the backbone of that diocese in rural Southern Mexico.

Francis’s decision to halt any ordination in Toulon came in the coattails of the many cases of clergy sexual abuse that have been emerging there over the last decade or so. So many that when the current nuncio to France, the Italian archbishop Celestino Migliore got to France, back in 2020, he did so to replace Luigi Ventura who was facing accusations of that crime.

Ventura left the nunciature in Paris in a cloud of scandal that continued until, in December 2020, the French courts sentenced him to an eight-month suspended prison term for sexual harassment of several men. The prelate and diplomat had to pay €13,000 to the victims, as well as €9,000 in legal fees.

Ventura had denied the accusation, and it was only after Pope Francis and the Holy See waived jurisdictional immunity, that Ventura went to trial. The decision to waive immunity was one of Francis’s many gestures to express the Church’s willingness to cooperate with the authorities on this kind of cases, and there are plenty of them, but they remain gestures and not the kind of long-term reforms that the crisis would need.

Accusations

The accusation against Ventura happened almost at the same time as the then archbishop of Paris, Michel Christian Alain Aupetit, had been also accused of harassing one of his female employees at the Parisian curia, forcing him out of office and ending one of the most storied careers in the French episcopate, as Aupetit had been, before becoming a priest, a successful medical doctor in France.

On top of that, there has been, up until now, the undigested effects of Tony Anatrella’s tenure as the grey eminence of the French Catholic Church when dealing with the clergy sexual abuse crisis.

Anatrella was a key figure not only in France, but also in Rome and many other cities of the Roman Catholic world where he was frequently called as an expert to lecture on all things sexual morality, with theological and psychological twist, despite the fact that there were, since the early years of this century, plenty of accusations against Anatrella who used to “cure” gay seminarians and clerics, at the bequest of their bishops, by sexually abusing them at his offices.

It would be hard to single out Rey in that respect since there is no record of accusations against him. What there have been, what prompted the so-called apostolic visitation and eventually Pope Francis’s decision to ask for his early resignation are plenty of doubts about how he was recruiting new candidates to the priesthood, ordaining them in such way that Rome sounded all the alarms on him, and whoever who was trying to go to Toulon to get what in Rome became suspect ordinations.

Sadly, there is a wing of the Roman Catholic Church unwilling to acknowledge the risks in Rey’s behavior. The split is clear when one goes over the two main French newspapers’ accounts of Rey’s resignation.

While Le Monde is akin to stress the many issues affecting the diocese of Toulon, including financial mismanagement, something that is hard to understand when one takes into consideration that Rey is an economist trained at a French university, who had some professional experience in that area before entering the seminary in the late seventies, Le Figaro dismisses the resignation as part of Pope Francis’s revenge on the Rad-Trads or “Tradis”, as the French newspaper calls them.

Le Figaro seems to be unable to acknowledge the fact that Toulon is hardly the only one diocese affected by early resignations of bishops, and more so by accusations or clergy sexual abuse.

Although I cannot claim to know of all the cases where the early resignation of a French bishop is related to clergy sexual abuse claims, out of 139 cases of early resignation of a bishop since the mid-20th century, at least ten come from France.

“Honor”

It is not the country with more cases, as that “honor” belongs to the United States with 29 cases, but my perception is that said “honor” is more a byproduct of the ability of the victims in the United States to pursue their predators, than an advantage for the French Church.

Also, it must be stressed that to those ten French cases one would need to add Monsignor Ventura, who travels as an Italian citizen, but whose crimes, at least those that we know of, happened in French territory.

And, even if it would be necessary to take into consideration other issues, the ten or eleven French cases put the French church as the most affected by the early resignation of bishops potentially associated with the clergy sexual abuse crisis, followed by Germany with six.

The French conference of Catholic bishops seems to be aware of the negative effects of the crisis. Otherwise, it would be impossible to understand why they commissioned the Sauvé Report (available here in English at Scribd), but it is clear—as Le Figaro’s take on Rey’s resignation proves—that French (Catholic) public opinion does not.

It would be impossible to go over each of the 28 cases of early resignation of Roman Catholic bishops on this installment, so I will point to other cases that are relevant to understand the extent of the crisis.

I am publishing a PDF print out with the names and other data of the bishops forced to resign from March 2023 through early 2025. It is available at Scribd here. If someone wants to have access to the original Excel file, please ask for it over my Bluesky account.

The remainder of this installment will provide references to three of the most notable cases, those where there is more evidence of their potential role in either clergy sexual abuse by them or some kind of mismanagement of their dioceses. Later, this series will revisit some of the cases as more evidence becomes available.

The Brazilian bishop

The most notable case, given the silence surrounding what happens in Brazil is that of bishop Valdir Mamede, Pope Benedict XVI originally appointed him as auxiliary to Brasilia, the capital city of the country with the largest population of Roman Catholics worldwide.

After a few years, he got a chance of becoming bishop on his own at the diocese of Catanduva, a suffragan diocese to Ribeirão Preto, in the state of Sao Paulo. It was up to the archbishop of that metropolis, Moacir Silva to deal with a probe under the new rules to go over cases involving predators who were able to reach the status of bishop.

After a short probe, whose details remain secret, known only to the leaders of the Brazilian conference of Catholic bishops and Rome, a series of attacks from Mamede on former seminarians and current young priests emerged.

Mamede used to be a member of a religious order in Brazil, the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, an order associated to the so-called Claretian family. What the probe was unable or unwilling to clear out is if Mamede’s attacks on seminarians or lay persons begun during his years at that order and, more importantly, if the superiors of that order made the Brazilian bishops aware of Mamede’s behavior.

Back in 2008, Mamede was incardinated, to the archdiocese of Brasilia, the nation’s capital. Oddly enough the page with his data at www.catholic-hierarchy.org lacks the required details as to the specific date in which he went from being a Claretian priest to be a priest of that archdiocese.

Those kind of movements from religious orders into dioceses or vice versa are one of the most frequent markers of issues the Roman Catholic bishops are unwilling to acknowledge as failures. Full reports, and a careful consideration of the reasons why a member of an order is leaving that order would be better than dealing, as it happens in this case, with the legacy of clergy sexual abuse.

Despite this and other known details of the reasons behind Mamede’s early resignation (he was only 62 when he sent his resignation to Rome), there is little or no will in Latin America to set up mechanisms to keep track of clerics with a record of abuse going from one order to another or from one diocese to another.

To make matters worse, Mamede used to be a fervent defender of traditional marriage willing to go into lengthy pieces about the evils of divorce and even arguing against the annulment of Roman Catholic marriages in cases when that kind of solution was available. In this entry, available only in Portuguese, bishop Mamede rants about those topics.

A case from Poland

A country that proves many of the contradictions in the handling of the clergy sexual abuse crisis is Poland. For many years, Karol Wojtyla and the generation of bishops who reached the height of their power in the second half of the 20th century portrayed Poland as a martyred land submitted to the excesses of Communist rule.

And there is no doubt about the disastrous effects of Communist, Soviet, rule in that and other countries in Eastern Europe, Latin America (Cuba), and Africa, but now we know that clergy sexual abuse was still happening during Communist rule in Poland and there were only limited consequences for the few cases that emerged.

As authoritarian as the Moscow-friendly regime was there, there is no evidence of a political use of the cases of sexual abuse against the Roman Catholic Polish hierarchy.

Now that communism is not an issue, what emerges is a picture very similar to the one that exists in other European and Latin American countries: bishops who love to play the role of victim of democracy, gender theory, feminism, modernity, and everything in between, but who are unable to follow their own rules.

That was the case of archbishop Andrzej Dzięga, now the former head of the Archdiocese of Szczecin-Kamień, a town far closer to Berlin, 130 kilometers or 80 miles north of the German capital than to Warsaw, located 460 kilometers or 280 miles to the East.

As far as it is possible to know, Dzięga is not directly involved in abuse, as his Brazilian colleague. However, his resignation was not the byproduct of the allegations of abuse against priests under his watch.

Rome sought to send him into an early retirement because of the scandal that emerged after a male prostitute, attending a party organized by a priest of his diocese went through an overdose.

Although the male prostitute was able to recover, Dzięga was not, so Rome forced him out of office when he still had four more years as bishop. The nunciature to Poland released at the time, in February 2024, a statement on his resignation providing little or no detail as to the extent of the situation in the diocese.

The secretive natura of these processes in the Roman Catholic Church, coupled with the “State of siege” mentality still prevalent in the Polish Church, and the very difficulty to deal with Polish, makes it harder to go deeper into this and other cases from Karol Wojtyla’s country of birth.

And Germany too

A third relevant case comes from Hildesheim, Germany. That diocese gained some notoriety when a priest there was unwilling welcome, as it is customary there, the visit of the auxiliary bishop of that diocese, Heinz-Günter Bongartz, who was scheduled to perform the confirmations of the local youth group in that parish.

It was not the first sign of trouble there. Quite the opposite, for some time, the German Catholic media had been talking about bishop Bongartz role in dismissing accusations of clergy sexual abuse against priests under his care. Bongartz had been at least since 2017 the target of complaints and accusations.

Although he had been auxiliary bishop only since 2010, before Benedict XVI appointed him to that position, he had been a key figure in that diocese. Oddly enough, all accusations seem to affect only Bongartz; little or nothing seem to affect the former head of that diocese and other, now emeritus, auxiliary bishops there.

That is the case of bishop emeritus, Norbert Trelle, now 82, who was in charge of that diocese from 2005 until 2017. It is also the case of Hans-Georg Koitz, auxiliary bishop emeritus, now 90, who was an auxiliary there from 1992 until 2010, and of Nikolaus Schwerdtfeger, who is also an auxiliary bishop emeritus, now 76, who was a key figure there from 1995 through 2023, when he retired.

Also, little or nothing is said about the role of the archbishop of Hamburg, the archdiocese overseeing Hildesheim. Over the last 20 years two German bishops have in charge at Hamburg: Werner Thissen, now archbishop emeritus (86) and Stefan Hesse, the current archbishop who, at 58, ha been there since 2015.

In that respect, Bongartz seems to be a lighting rod of sorts, absorbing most of the charges about that has happened in Hildesheim for at least the last two decades. It seems hard to believe that the sole responsibility for the mismanagement there falls on Bongartz, while all the other bishops go to live free of reproach.

Not that Bongartz is facing some unbearable punishment. After all, Rome only forced him out earlier than expected.

The Sodalitium, again

As I write these lines on Sunday, January 19th, there is a persistent rumor about the end of the Sodalitium. Peruvian newspaper La República was even willing to run today with that story as its main for the day, but I have been unable to get confirmation of that news from my sources at 9 PM ET.

As such, I will only say that even if it happens, it will be extremely difficult. The main problem during John Paul II’s tenure as Pope is that he allowed for “orders” as the Legion of Christ, Opus Dei, the Sodalitium, and many others to become not only holdings of religious firms, but also to act as investment banks, offering all kinds of services for rich people seeking tax havens, investment funds, and other services contradicting the very idea of poverty as depicted in the Gospels.

Even if it is possible to know that the Sodalitium had investments in the funerary services sector in Peru, besides schools and other traditional businesses, it is unclear the kind of complex operations they went through to build said businesses, and who are the owners of all that wealth. Also, there is the issue of how they grabbed sizable portions of land from Peruvian First Nations.

Suppressing the Sodalitium will not be an easy task for Francis. If he is able to do so, it would be an extremely kind sign if out of the wealth the leaders of the Sodalitium were able to build there are concrete reparations for their many victims.

At Los Ángeles Press we have been following the case with some detail. If you want more information you can use our search engine to get more information on this case.