In a very rare showing of papal power, the pope fired a Slovak bishop for allegedly mismanaging his diocese. In most cases, when bishops make mistakes morally or in management of their dioceses, they are persuaded to resign from their post by the Vatican. Instead, Pope Benedict XVI has decided to remove bishops who do not elect to resign from their posts. The pope removed three other bishops last year as well.
The case that made the news the most involved Bishop William Morris from Toowoomba, Australia. Bishop Morris said that the church should consider ordaining married men and women. The pope also fired a Congolese bishop for problems managing his diocese along with an Italian bishop for management problems in May. The bishop removed on Monday was Robert Bezak of Trnava, Slovakia. The Vatican said that Benedict “relieved from pastoral care.” The Vatican did not issue any reasons but reports said that administrative issues were the cause. Tradition states that bishops resign at the age of 75, which is the customary retirement age.
The ability of the pope to exercise this power has interesting implications in the cases of bishops mishandling sexually abusive priests. There are some United States lawsuits blaming the pope for the actions of the pedophile priests in the church but the Holy See argues that bishops are mainly in charge of their dioceses and the pope does not control them. The Vatican has worked to limit liability to the bishops, saying that the pope does not have enough control over them to be held accountable for priests who sexually abuse children.
Hi,
I am from Slovakia, and I have personally met the Bishop Bezak.
The man full of Christ and love for people. He hasn’t have any scandals on his account or even rumors around him during his 28 years priesthood. In 2009 he was appointed as a Bishop in Trnava Diocese with around 1.300.000 believers. (There is 8 dioceses in SLOVAKIA.)
This is very strange situation what is going in Slovakia now. All the newspaper, TV channels are filled by this wierd dismissing of our Bishop Robert Bezak.
Even some of our christian (but also non christian) celebrities have appealed against this decision from the Holy See. Their decision papers gave us no explaining why are they going to fire him. They just forbided him to talk with any reporters or news. They even excluded him from his ArciDiocese and he had to quietly left the area. Till now 3 of 13 of his Deans announced their will to give demission and leave the diocese with him. Hundreds of believers were in the streets of Trnava protesting. There will be supporting concerts for him next week. During 48 hours over 6.000 believers have signed the petition.
I will just briefly say that he is a wonderfull person, he was our priest for 2 years. He was so much into Christ and loved him a lot. He had wonderfull relationships with people, also with non christian peoples but aslo with reporters.
When he was named as a Bishop he sent all his priests in Diocese (hundreds of them) his cell phone number to have personal contact with them. He started to uncover and reveal very doubtful financial operations of his predecessor bishop John Sokol (Komunist STB agent dismissed in 2009 and sued for 16.000.000€ defalcation of Church money), and I can go on and on…
Now he had quietly and humbly gone somewhere and believers don’t know anything.
The official statements after Apostolic visitation is that he was “mismanaging his diocese”. Such a lame explanation for cleansing and making quiet the Bishop who started to do real
Christian biblical job in his Diocese.
Who is Robert Bezak?
You can read FIVE BEZAK’S SINS: THE GLOSS ABOUT BEZAK (translated with Google translate).