A group of priests and scholars from around the world have signed an open letter accusing Pope Francis of heresy.
Dissatisfied with Francis’s reform agenda, the 19 Catholic priests and academics sent the 20-page letter to the College of Bishops, asking for the college to investigate Francis for the “canonical delict of heresy”.
The appeal to the bishops to investigate Francis began with English deacon and journalist Nick Donnelly, a deacon and journalist, who has not posted on his “Protect the Pope” website since 2014, the year after Francis was elected.
Donnelly has also changed his Twitter handle (ie username) from @ProtectthePope, which he used during Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy. He now uses the handle @ProtecttheFaith.
The signatories say:”We take this measure as a last resort to respond to the accumulating harm caused by Pope Francis’s words and actions over several years, which have given rise to one of the worst crises in the history of the Catholic Church.
“We are addressing this letter to you for two reasons: first, to accuse Pope Francis of the canonical derelict of heresy and, second, to request that you take the steps necessary to deal with the grave situation of a heretical pope. We take this measure as a last resort to respond to the accumulating harm caused by Pope Francis’s words and actions over several years, which have given rise to one of the worst crises in the history of the Catholic Church.”
The signatories want the College of Bishops to admonish Francis publicly “to abjure the heresies that he has professed”.
The letter represents the third stage in a process that began in 2016 when a group of Catholic clergy and scholars wrote a private letter to all the cardinals and Eastern Catholic patriarchs.
They pointed out what they believed to be “heresies and other serious errors” either in or favoured by Francis’s post-synodal Apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia.
In 2017, they and others published a Filial Correction with a petition signed by about 14,000 people.
In this, they stopped short of accusing Francis of heresy, but said he propagated heresies with regard to seven theological issues they identified in Amoris laetitia.
The authors now claim Francis is guilty of the crime of heresy.
“This crime is committed when a Catholic knowingly and persistently denies something which he knows that the Church teaches to be revealed by God. Taken together, the words and actions of Pope Francis amount to a comprehensive rejection of Catholic teaching on marriage and sexual activity, on the moral law, and on grace and the forgiveness of sins,” the signatories say.
Among other concerns, the letter indicates the link between the rejection of Catholic teaching and what the writers see as the favour Francis shows to bishops and other clergy who have either been guilty of sexual sins and crimes.
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