Fessio fired, again, from Ave Maria

(RNS) A prominent priest and friend of Pope Benedict XVI was fired for the second time from Ave Maria University in Florida on Monday (July 20) for criticizing the school’s policies in a conversation with a board member. The Rev. Joseph Fessio said he was dismissed from his post as the resident theologian at Ave […]

(RNS) A prominent priest and friend of Pope Benedict XVI was fired for the second time from Ave Maria University in Florida on Monday (July 20) for criticizing the school’s policies in a conversation with a board member.

The Rev. Joseph Fessio said he was dismissed from his post as the resident theologian at Ave Maria because he told Jack Donahue, then the school’s trustee board chairman, last November that the university was financially at risk without a change of administration.

“I told (Donahue) that there were policies being followed that were at the root of the problem, that the present administration was irrevocably wedded to those policies,” he said in an e-mail.


Fessio said Jack Sites, the school’s academic vice president, acted as a “Christian gentleman” when he dismissed Fessio, claiming that unnamed faculty members felt those comments undermined the university. However, Fessio said he was not given the opportunity to respond to the allegations, and his dismissal is “another mistake in a long series of unwise decisions.”

In 2007, the university asked Fessio to resign as provost, and then fired him. Ave Maria administrators then reinstated him, after students and the orthodox Catholic community demanded it, but demoted him to resident theologian.

The school released a statement on Monday (July 20), saying it has “ended its formal relationship” with Fessio in a decision “made by the leadership of the university and supported by its Board of Trustees.” The statement did not include the reason for his permanent removal.

Ave Maria was founded by Domino’s Pizza magnate Tom Monaghan. After opening in Ann Arbor, Mich., the conservative college moved to Naples, Fla., in 2003 and recently opened a new campus and self-sustaining town on the edge of the Everglades.

Fessio is a former student of Pope Benedict XVI, who supervised Fessio’s doctoral dissertation when Benedict was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Fessio said he is a “better target” for censure as a public figure.

“I wasn’t an instigator of anything,” Fessio said in a phone call from San Francisco, where he founded Ignatius Press, a Catholic publishing house.


He plans to devote his time to Ignatius Press, which is the official U.S. publisher of Benedict’s books. “I’m happy doing whatever God wants me to do,” he said.

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