An Italian priest has been excommunicated by his local bishop for saying in a homily that Pope Francis “is not the pope” and calling him “a usurper.”
The Diocese of Livorno in Tuscany issued a decree on Jan. 1 notifying Catholics that Father Ramon Guidetti “publicly committed a schismatic act” during Mass and has ipso facto incurred “latae sententiae excommunication,” or an automatic excommunication.
Bishop Simone Giusti informed his diocese that Catholics are not to attend any Masses offered by the excommunicated priest or they would also “incur the very serious penalty of excommunication.”
The bishop cited Canon 751, which defines schism as “the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.”
A video uploaded to YouTube shows Guidetti calling Pope Francis a “usurper” and a “freemason” in his homily given on Dec. 31, 2023, to mark the one-year anniversary of Benedict XVI’s death.
In the homily, the priest further denied that Pope Francis has been the pope for the last decade.
Guidetti, 48, had served since 2017 as a parish priest of the Church of San Ranieri, located outside of the coastal city of Livorno about 150 miles north of Rome.
According to a local paper in Livorno, the bishop met with Guidetti before Christmas to discuss his dissent and proceeded with the official excommunication decree after the priest’s public act of schism on Dec. 31.
This article was originally published on Catholic News Agency.
Courtney Mares is a Rome Correspondent for Catholic News Agency. A graduate of Harvard University, she has reported from news bureaus on three continents and was awarded the Gardner Fellowship for her work with North Korean refugees.
