France: A priest Freemason relieved of his duties

This, according to a press release of the Diocese of Annecy dated May 24, 2013.

Ordained in 1996, this priest entered The Grand Orient five years later, in 2001, and he has not hesitated to take a stance in favor of the ordination of married men and for homosexual “marriage”.

In 2012, an anonymous letter addressed to the Bishop of Annecy and the Apostolic Nunciature in Paris denounced the Masonic membership of the cleric, who initially denied it, but he was subsequently abashed by the announcement on the Internet of his participation in a Masonic meeting in 2011.  He was then asked to quit Freemasonry so as to devote himself to his ministry as a priest, which the interested party refused to do, noted the Diocese of Annecy, whose Ordinary is Bishop Yves Boivineau. 

Father Vesin, who wants to be a “Brother” too... justifies his initiation in the lodge L’Avenir du Chablais à l’Orient de Genève as “the expression of [his] absolute freedom of conscience in the Catholic institution”.  For him, “the time of the confrontation is past,” and he also hoped to be able to reconcile his two affiliations.

On March 7 of this year, just before the conclave, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ordered Bishop Boivineau to dismiss that priest who refused to comply. 

It is no surprise that the Grand Master of the Grand Orient, José Gulino, sees this sanction as “a return to obscurantism.  It is possible to be a priest and a Freemason;  not to understand that is medieval” (sic)! 

A reading of the 1884 Encyclical Humanum genus by Leo XIII proves the contrary.