Vatican says layman cannot lead Maryknoll order

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Vatican has forbidden a Catholic missionary group to install a layman as the leader of its American branch, insisting that the job be reserved for a priest. The Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, a U.S.-based Catholic foreign mission society, voted in May to make Brother Wayne Fitzpatrick its U.S. regional superior. But […]

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Vatican has forbidden a Catholic missionary group to install a layman as the leader of its American branch, insisting that the job be reserved for a priest.

The Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, a U.S.-based Catholic foreign mission society, voted in May to make Brother Wayne Fitzpatrick its U.S. regional superior.

But the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples has refused to approve Fitzpatrick’s election, following a church policy that lay members may not lead religious orders that include priests.


Fitzpatrick, a former secretary general of Maryknoll, is a lay brother, meaning that he has not received holy orders and cannot celebrate Mass or administer the sacraments.

“There’s still a hierarchical sense in which having a brother over a priest is a problem,” the Rev. Ed Dougherty, Maryknoll’s superior general, told the National Catholic Reporter. “I had hoped maybe we’d moved beyond that.”

A new round of elections will reportedly conclude by the end of August.

Maryknoll, which describes itself as fostering “self-worth and dignity among marginalized peoples everywhere,” says it currently operates in 27 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The order has recently been touched by controversy involving the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest who last year participated in a ceremony in Kentucky that purportedly ordained a woman as a priest.

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith notified Bourgeois last fall that he would be automatically excommunicated within 30 days if he did not recant his support for women’s ordination.

Bourgeois, whose excommunication has not been formally announced, reiterated his position in favor of women priests on Sunday (Aug. 23) at a public gathering in Massachusetts.


“If they choose to kick me out of the church because I believe that men and women are equal, so be it,” Bourgeois said, according to The Boston Globe. “I will never be at peace being in any organization that would exclude others.”

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