Priest who defended homosexual ‘marriage,’ transgenderism defrocked by Vatican
April 18, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An Argentinean priest who has been an outspoken supporter of homosexual "marriage" and gender ideology has been removed from the clerical state permanently by the Vatican's Congregation of the Clergy, according to the Archdiocese of Cordoba, where the cleric was stationed.
Fr. Alessio.
The Archdiocese reports that the decision to laicize Fr. Jose Nicolas Alessio was officially issued on February 6, and that the priest is "excluded from all exercise of sacred ministry, in accordance with the norms that obligate priests that have been dismissed."
"This dismissal is not subject to any appeal," the archdiocese added.
Cordoba's Archbishop Carlos Jose Nanez began a canonical prosecution of Alessio in 2010 and temporarily suspended him from his duties, when the media published statements attributed to him in favor of "marriage" between people of the same sex.
The affirmations by the priest were made during a national debate over the issue that ultimately led to the approval of such "marriages" by the Argentinean government.
Argentina's El Nuevo Diario newspaper reports that, according to one archdiocesan official, Alessio was also accused of having presided at homosexual "marriage" ceremonies as well as "marriages" between divorcées, all of which are regarded as immoral and sacramentally invalid unions by the Roman Catholic Church.
Alessio was defiant at the time procedures were initiated against him, calling Archbishop Nanez "fascist, retrograde, and incapable of understanding diversity," and complaining that "they are penalizing me for thinking differently."
When the decision was made public on April 10, the priest lamented that "more than 30 years in the service of the people of God has no significance for the Catholic Church."
According to Argentina's La Prensa newspaper, Alessio urged Pope Francis to do away with the Catholic Church's 2,000-year teaching on the evil of homosexual acts when the pontiff was elected in March.
The newspaper reports that the piest wrote Francis a letter urging him to create "a commission of experts in the human and social sciences for the quick promulgation of a document that distances itself from homophobia, which clearly rejects the theory that considers homosexuality as a 'grave disorder,' which values gender ideology as an indispensable help for the respect for diversity, and which opens discussion on the whole of the Church's sexual morality."
Alessio's views on matters of sexual morality differ greatly from those of Pope Francis, who as Archbishop of Buenos Aires called homosexual "marriage" a "machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God."
