TORONTO — A Canadian Roman Catholic priest who supports the ordination of women has been excommunicated after he held services in what authorities called a “schismatic church.”
The Palm Sunday service was the second held by Ed Cachia at his newly formed Christ the Servant Catholic Church and was attended by about 250 people who have followed the ousted priest to a rented hall in Cold Springs, a village about 80 miles northeast of Toronto. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Peterborough promptly declared it a “schismatic church” and said Cachia had “incurred automatic excommunication by virtue of the law of the church.”
Cachia, 56, first ran afoul of the church last July when he applauded the ordination of nine women as “priests” on a boat on the St. Lawrence River.
In October 2005, he was fired as pastor of St. Michael’s Parish in Cobourg, east of Toronto, after he wrote a letter to the local newspaper urging his church to admit women to the priesthood.
He told supporters April 9 that he was saddened to be excommunicated during Holy Week. “I never in my whole lifetime ever dreamed it would come to this,” he told a Canadian newspaper. (TAB)
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