US cleric stripped of priestly status.

International Herald Tribune.
The Global Edition of The New York Times.

The Associated Press.
Published: March 10, 2009.

ST. LOUIS: A priest who defied his Roman Catholic bishop in 2005 to become pastor of a largely Polish-American parish at odds with the archdiocese has been stripped of his priesthood.

The decision by Pope Benedict XVI to return Marek Bozek from priest to lay person came a year after the move was recommended by former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke.

In 2005, Bozek was serving in southern Missouri's Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese when he accepted the pastorship of St. Stanislaus Kostka parish in St. Louis at the invitation of parishioners. Only bishops can assign priests.

Burke had removed the Polish-heritage parish's two priests over a long-festering dispute over control of parish assets. Parishioners then took it upon themselves to hire the Polish-speaking Bozek.

Bishop James Johnston said the Vatican's decision resulted from Bozek abandoning the assignment in Springfield-Cape Girardeau.

But Bozek said Monday he will not leave St. Stanislaus and will take his orders from a reformed Catholic bishop, who granted him priestly faculties in the event he was laicized by the Vatican.

That bishop, he said, is affiliated with the late 19th century reformed Catholic church movement which rejected the declaration of papal infallibility.

Bozek received the formal pronouncement in Springfield late Monday afternoon and planned a late evening news conference in St. Louis.

In 2005, Bozek and six lay parish board members were excommunicated for their alleged act of "schism." Four were reconciled with the church in June.

Bozek has attracted divorced and gay formerly disenfranchised Catholics to St. Stanislaus and repelled some of the longtime Polish families who hired him in 2005.

He said the parish continues to grow even though it was "suppressed" or no longer recognized by the archdiocese in December 2005.

He said he will continue to minister there as long as the parish wants to employ him.

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