Rome clamps down on rebel priest

The Tablet
29 November 2012

The Vatican has stripped a prominent Austrian priest who has spear-heading calls for church reform of his right to use the title monsignor.

Rome also said today that Helmut Schüller was no longer a "Chaplain of His Holiness", Reuters reported. However he remains a priest.

Fr Schüller, a former vicar-general to Vienna's archbishop, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, had been given the honorary title in his capacity as head of the Austrian branch of the Catholic charity Caritas.

Last year he founded the Austrian Priests' Initiative, which in its "Call to Disobedience" favours the ordination of women and married men and communion for remarried divorcees, and has inspired the establishment of similar groups in Germany, Ireland, France, the US and Australia.