VATICAN city - Pope Benedict XVI made an Australian Bishop outspoken who had called for the Church to consider the ordination of married men and women.
The Vatican said in a release Monday that the Pope had "removed from pastoral" Morris of William Bishop of the Diocese of Toowoomba, West of Brisbane.
This move was high by the standards of the Vatican, which usually stops to say purely and simply that it has ousted a religious leader. Most often, the Vatican asks the reluctant church leaders to resign and announces that the Pope has accepted their resignations.
Australian media reported that Morris has recently published an open letter, saying: it was removed for a message from 2006 to the faithful in which he argued that a shortage of priests should encourage the Church to consider the ordination of married men and women.
Beno?t, like his predecessor just-beatified, John Paul II, resolutely upheld Vatican teaching that only Virgin men may be ordained in the Roman Catholic Church, while married men in the Church of the faithful to the Pontiff Latin rite may become priests. Recent years have also seen that the warmly welcome Vatican married Anglican priests who converted to Catholicism.
Morris said the complaints of the letter led to Rome, which led in turn to an investigation by the Vatican. According to the daily The Australian, Morris said that he had never written a letter of resignation.
A month earlier, the Vatican rejected a Congolese Bishop, Jean-Claude Makaya Loemban, also say "withdraw pastoral." According to the African media reports, he was dismissed for management problems in his diocese.
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