Yet more on removing bishops

By Domenico Bettinelli, Jr. ( articles - email ) | May 08, 2003

Cheshire, a canonist friend sent this along as well:

Dom, basically, the more likely possibility would be that Rome appoint a co-adjutor or apostolic administrator, and give him full administrative power. This would then have the effect of making the diocese more or less ungovernable for the bishop who refused to leave. If the new guy is able to politically assert himself, he gets to stay; if not, Rome eventually accepts the resignations of both when the clergy and laity rebel, then appoints a third individual. This is more or less what happened in the Toronto Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy a few years ago.

... This is not a scenario the Code envisions for the most part, since the assumption is that this would play out between the Roman Pontiff and the Bishop in question. Thus Chesire's comments are more or less implicit in canons 16, 17, 333, and 334.