Censured priest finds support in W. Warwick

WEST WARWICK, R.I. — An Irish priest censured by the Vatican for supporting the ordination of women and challenging church teachings on homosexuality received a warm welcome when speaking at Emanuel Lutheran Church on Sunday afternoon.

About 75 people turned out to hear Father Tony Flannery, who is on an 18-city, three-week tour of the United States after being suspended from priestly ministry in 2012.

Thin, short and graying, the 67-year-old priest, while mild-mannered and prone to making occasional jokes, recounted the life-changing episode that began when the Vatican came after him. While he had expressed views critical of the church in articles for Reality magazine, he said he figured that since he was just a Redemptorist preacher from Galway, Ireland, “the Vatican couldn’t care less about me.”

“I never considered myself a radical,” he said.

But when he refused to sign and publish a statement agreeing that women will never be ordained and embracing church orthodoxy on such matters as contraception and homosexuality, Flannery found himself on the outside of the Catholic Church looking in.

“There was no way they were going to back down,” he said. “That was it. That was the breaking point.”

Flannery said he couldn’t sign it because “everybody would have known I didn’t believe a word of it” and “most important of all, could I look in the mirror for the rest of my life?”

Ironically, he said, the church’s censure has elevated his profile outside Ireland, providing him a larger platform to espouse his views.

Among the groups that sponsored his visit as part of the “Catholic Tipping Point Tour” were the Women’s Ordination Conference. Its executive director, Erin Saiz Hanna, a Barrington resident and graduate of St. Mary Academy-Bay View and Salve Regina University, escorted him to the West Warwick church.

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