Pope: Priests obey bishop or lose jobs

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has laid down an ultimatum to Nigerian priests: lose your job if you don’t obey me and your bishop.

Francis met June 8 at the Vatican with a delegation from the Ahiara diocese, where priests have been refusing to accept the 2012 appointment by the then pontiff, Benedict XVI, of Nigeria’s Peter Okpaleke as bishop of that country.

Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano said Sunday that Francis was acting “for the good of the people of God” by threatening to suspend the priests from the ministry if they didn’t pledge in a letter, by July 9, “total obedience” to Francis and “clearly manifest total obedience to [Okpaleke].”

Francis told the visiting delegation that he was “very sad” about the priests’ refusal to obey and ruled out tribal loyalties as explaining the refusal.

Those priests opposing Okpaleke’s taking up of his office “want to destroy the church, which is not permitted,” Francis said in his address to the delegation.

Francis added: “the pope can’t be indifferent” to the rebellion.

In addition to writing the letter, they must also accept the bishop chosen by Rome. If, within a month, each priest doesn’t do so, he will be barred from activities such as the celebration of the sacraments, and “will lose his current office,” Francis warned.

Francis acknowledged that his move “seems very harsh.”

In 2015, the diocese served around 520,000 Catholics, out of a local population of about 675,000, and had 128 diocesan priests and seven other priests. It wasn’t immediately clear how many of the priests were involved in the rebellion against the bishop’s appointment.