ROME, Italy — Father Frank Pavone, founder of the pro-life organization Priests for Life, has been dismissed from the clerical state for “blasphemous communications on social media” and “persistent disobedience of the lawful instructions of his diocesan bishop.”
The papal nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, wrote a letter dated December 13 to all U.S. bishops, declaring that the Vatican had issued a “Supreme Decision” on November 9, 2022, that Father Frank Pavone “be dismissed from the clerical state.”
The letter added that the decision admitted of “no possibility of appeal.”
A statement accompanying the nuncio’s letter said that the decision to laicize the priest “was taken after Father Pavone was found guilty in canonical proceedings of blasphemous communications on social media, and of persistent disobedience of the lawful instructions of his diocesan bishop.”
“Father Pavone was given ample opportunity to defend himself in the canonical proceedings, and he was also given multiple opportunities to submit himself to the authority of his diocesan bishop,” the statement said, adding that Father Pavone demonstrated “no reasonable justification for his actions.”
“Since Priests for Life, Inc., is not a Catholic organization, Mr. Pavone’s continuing role in it as a lay person would be entirely up to the leadership of that organization,” the statement concluded.
For his part, Father Pavone has denied the charges, insisting that his bishop abused his authority in a persecutorial fashion and sought any excuse to have him dismissed from the priesthood.
Pavone told Crux, an online Catholic news outlet, that his bishop in Amarillo, Patrick Zurek, has been threatening to have him laicized for the past five years “under three or four changing, shifting rationales.”
“In American law you go after a crime in search of a person,” Pavone said. “Something wrong has been done, and you go and track down the people responsible for it. This is the opposite, it’s a person in search of a crime. They’re going after me and they keep changing the reasons why.”
Pavone referred to his bishop’s actions an “abuse of authority,” declaring that he has been obedient to instructions from his superiors.
“I want to be a priest. I’m not leaving the church under any circumstances. If you close the door, I’m going to be standing on the other side of the door waiting for it to open again, and, I’m going to keep doing my pro-life work,” Pavone said.
In April 2020, Pavone announced that he would be joining the Catholics for Trump advisory board but three months later said he would be stepping down from the board in obedience to a mandate from the Congregation for Clergy that he not hold formal titles with political campaigns.
“I’ve been requested by the competent ecclesiastical authority not to have an official title/position on the advisory boards. So, as a priest in good standing, I’ve followed that request,” Father Pavone declared at the time.
He also said at the time that the 2020 presidential election was not so much a clash of personalities as a “clash of worldviews,” at the core of which was the right to life of the unborn.
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