Australian Priest Excommunicated for Support of Women’s Ordination

In September, Fr. Greg Reynolds of Melbourne, Australia, received a letter of excommunication for heresy and speaking publicly against church teachings, which referred to Reynolds’ homilies supporting women’s ordination that had been reported in Australia’s newspaper The Age.

Denis Hart, Archbishop of Melbourne, sent Fr. Reynolds a letter citing “the decision by Pope Francis to dismiss Fr. Reynolds from the clerical state and to declare his automatic excommunication [which] has been made because of his public teaching on the ordination of women contrary to the teaching of the Church,” according to the UK’s Catholic Herald.

Referring to the fact that he was sanctioned under Pope Francis, Reynolds remarked to the National Catholic Reporter, “I am very surprised that this order has come under his watch; it seems so inconsistent with everything else he has said and done.”