Vermont priest removed after balking at COVID-19 precautions

A Vermont priest has been removed from his position after he opposed COVID-19 precautions set by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington.

The diocese announced Tuesday that the Rev. Peter Williams of the Holy Family Parish in Springfield was removed “for his serious disobedience and disrespect shown to the office of the bishop.”

This comes after Williams in January made his opposition to COVID-19 requirements issued by the diocese publicly known in a video posted to the parish’s YouTube page, according to NBC 5.

Bishop Christopher Coyne had requested in September that priests and deacons in the diocese get vaccinated, saying that if they did not they would be required to wear a mask while carrying out certain professional duties and get tested for COVID-19 every other week.

Williams said in the video that he had hired a canonical lawyer after the church’s “incursion into my rights as a human being, certainly [as] a U.S. citizen,” according to NBC 5.

In another video posted in February, Williams called the coronavirus vaccine “experimental” despite its approval by the Food and Drug Administration and millions of individuals having received shots, per the local outlet.

“A great deal of misinformation has been spread that has caused much division and concern within the parish and has impacted his ability to minister to all parishioners,” Coyne said in a letter explaining Williams’s removal.

“My hope was that this situation could have been reconciled privately, but unfortunately it only escalated causing much angst within the parish,” the bishop added.

“I apologize for the length of time it has taken to reach this decision since Father Williams first made this matter public. I wanted to make sure that my decision was fair and that Church law in this matter was followed so as not to infringe on Father Williams’s canonical rights,” Coyne said, adding that Williams has been invited to stay at the bishop’s parish “so that he and I can pray, dialogue and worship together to hopefully change the bad opinion he has of me as his bishop and to strengthen the bond of fraternity that should exist between a bishop and his priest.”