HARTFORD, Connecticut (LifeSiteNews) — American Archbishop Christopher Coyne, who dismissed a priest for refusing to comply with COVID mandates, has endorsed female deacons and suggested the Pope move the Vatican out of Rome.
In an interview published Monday with local news station WTNH News8, Coyne was asked if he saw “a larger role for women in the Church in the future.”
“I do,” he replied. “Women’s ordination, at this point, in terms of the diaconate, is kind of being discussed,” he said. “In terms of the priesthood, it’s not open for discussion. We’ve been told it’s ‘case closed.’ But hopefully, there will be some opportunity down the road [to] ordain or name some deaconesses.”
Coyne has recently been named coadjutor Archbishop of Hartford, Connecticut, and is expected to become the next Archbishop of Hartford.
While Coyne has endorsed a form of female ordination, the Catholic Church teaches that only men can receive the sacrament of Holy Orders and that the ministerial diaconate is the first order of ordination.
Last year, when Coyne was still Bishop of Burlington, Vermont, he dismissed a priest who refused to comply with a mask mandate and COVID-19 testing requirements for unvaccinated priests, as LifeSiteNews reported.
READ: Vermont bishop dismisses parish priest for resisting COVID-19 mandates
Coyne removed Father Peter Williams of Holy Family Parish due to “serious disobedience and disrespect shown to the office of the bishop.”
Coyne had declared that priests who do not get COVID-19 injections must wear a mask during all celebrations of the sacraments and any interactions with individuals in the course of pastoral ministry. Un-jabbed clergy were also to be tested for COVID every other week, he had ordered.
Coyne implemented the draconian measures despite near-universal recognition (already in 2022) that the COVID jabs do not halt transmission of the virus. Studies have also discredited the effectiveness of mask mandates in reducing viral spread.
During his interview the archbishop said that he expects more churches in Hartford to close in the future. He told the interviewer that many who have left the Catholic Church have joined Protestant mega-churches “because they felt welcome there.”
He suggested that something similar to a “mega-church,” such as turning four smaller parishes in a town into a large one, could work well in Catholic communities as well.
Moving the Vatican out of Rome
Archbishop Coyne was asked what he would tell Pope Francis if the Pontiff asked him for advice on improving the Church.
“Get it out of Italy. Get it out of Rome,” he replied, arguing that the See of Peter should be moved to another country.
“We need to put it someplace [else]. It’s too Roman,” he continued. “I just think because it’s Roman, it’s inbred in terms of the culture of Rome; it’s inbred in terms of the culture of the community there.”
Coyne recalled his bad experience with the Italian bureaucracy when he lived there for five years.
“[Francis] tried and tried and tried to change the Roman ways, but you hit the Roman ways that have been part of the tradition of the Church for years.”
“That would be the first thing I’d say,” he stated. “Is there any way we can move out of Rome and just kind of start over with a different bureaucracy?”
The interviewer asked the archbishop what he has to say to former Catholics who have left the Church and are considering coming back, to which he replied: “We have a place for you. You’re always welcome.”
“When you come here, it’s a non-judgmental zone,” he continued. “Yes, sometimes our message is hard to hear because it’s challenging. But we’re all on the way to salvation, and we want to accompany each other on that way, growing in a life of holiness.”
“We don’t want you to stay where you are. I don’t want to stay where I am. I want to grow more towards God. But I want to walk with you. And all are welcome,” he concluded.
Archbishop Coyne’s history of dissent
Coyne, appointed by Pope Francis as bishop of the Diocese of Burlington, Vermont, in 2015, has a record of dissent on fundamental Catholic teaching regarding sexuality and the family, as LifeSiteNews reported.
In an interview days after his installation in Burlington, he described the gender confusion of so-called “transgender” people as “biological” and “who they are.” “So there’s no fault to be made, actually,” he said. Coyne further suggested that a homosexual may not be “a bad person or a bad Catholic” for attempting to contract a same-sex “marriage.”
He later accepted to speak at a pro-LGBT conference hosted by dissident Father James Martin, S.J., who openly supports homosexual “marriage” and adoption and refers to God as female. In 2021, Coyne signed a letter urging the U.S. bishops’ conference to shut down discussions about denying Holy Communion to lawmakers who facilitate abortion.
The Catholic Church has always condemned homosexuality as intrinsically evil and disordered. Homosexual acts, according to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “can in no case be approved of.”
The magisterium of the Church also upholds the biological reality that there are only two genders, and that God creates every human being as either male or female. “By creating the human being man and woman, God gives personal dignity equally to the one and the other. Each of them, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity,” states the Catechism of the Catholic Church.