Vatican dismisses priest who announced his homosexuality

A priest-official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has been removed from his post after announcing he is gay and living with a partner. 

Mgr Krzysztof Charamsa, 43, has worked at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) since 2003, is assistant secretary of the International Theological Commission and teaches theology at two of Rome’s pontifical universities, the Gregorian and the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum.

During his period at the CDF, which in 2003 issued a document opposing legal recognition of gay unions and describing homosexuality as “a troubling moral and social phenomenon”, the polish theologian worked under Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Cardinal William Levada and most recently Cardinal Gerhard Müller.  

Mgr Charamsa gave a press conference on Saturday 3 October revealing he was gay, introducing his partner and urging the Church to change its stance on homosexuality. 

He told an "I want the church and my community know who I am: a gay priest who is happy, and proud of his identity. I’m prepared to pay the consequences, but it is time that the Church open its eyes, and realised that offering gay believers total abstinence from a life of love, is inhuman.”

Monsignor Krzysztof Charamsa, left, and his boyfriend Eduard (PA)

The director of the Holy See press office Father Federico Lombardi said: “the decision to make such a pointed statement on the eve of the opening of the Synod appears very serious and irresponsible, since it aims to subject the Synod assembly to undue media pressure”. 

He added that Msgr. Charamsa “will certainly be unable to continue to carry out his previous work in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Pontifical universities, while the other aspects of his situation shall remain the competence of his diocesan Ordinary”.