Redemptorist priest Fr Tony Flannery, now facing his 10th year of being silenced by the Vatican for publicly expressing support for women's ordination and same-sex marriage, as well as liberal views on homosexuality, has called for an independent review of his treatment by Rome.
“Recently I heard a theologian being asked how he could be so outspoken without drawing sanctions on himself as had happened to me. His answer was that it was a matter of timing, that the climate is different under the present papacy,” he said.
“All the issues that I spoke and wrote about, and that the CDF (Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) objected to, around priesthood, women and Catholic sexual teaching, are now being discussed widely and freely right around the Church, with no fear of sanctions,” he said.
"Three prelates who dealt with my case are now gone," he said. This was a reference to the two most recent Prefect's at the CDF, Cardinal William Levada who has died and Cardinal Gerhard Mueller who was removed by Pope Francis.
This week it was announced that Archbishop Giacomo Morandi, currently secretary at the CDF and believed to be behind the Vatican's ban on same sex blessings, was being reassigned by Pope Francis to an Italian diocese.
Fr Flannery recalled how this week too Pope Francis had written "letters of encouragement and praise" to "my good friend, Jeannine Gramick (an American nun)," and had "very publicly lined up in support of herself and her work with New Ways Ministry which advocates tirelessly for the rights of LGBTQ people within the church."
The priest, who is 75 later this month, asked “what do I want at this time of my life? There is something I would like to happen while my mind is still functioning (my eldest brother had dementia before he died), and while I have reasonably good health,” he said.
“I would like the process by which my case was dealt with by the CDF to be reviewed, preferably by somebody independent, who has a knowledge of civil, along with canon, law,” he said.
“I continue to carry a grievance that I wasn’t even given the most basic of human rights in my dealing with that body. I don’t think that my request for an independent review is too much to ask, from an institution that proclaims that it stands for truth, justice and love,” he said.
