Philadelphia, USA - Seven more priests removed from their duties by the Philadelphia Archdiocese in recent years for allegedly abusing minors have been defrocked by the Vatican, the archdiocese announced Thursday.
Among them, the priests had served in about 35 parishes and five Catholic high schools across the Philadelphia region over the past four decades.
The seven had been removed from their ministerial duties in the archdiocese years ago.
The Vatican's decision to laicize, or permanently remove them, is the most serious action the Roman Catholic Church can take against a priest. They are barred from ever administering sacraments or serving as priests in any capacity.
Donna M. Farrell, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese, declined to give a total number of area priests removed from their duties for sexually abusing minors, but the archdiocese covering the city and suburbs previously has said 47 priests, living or dead, had been removed as a result of such allegations in the last half-century.
Thursday's announcement brought to nine the number in the archdiocese who have been defrocked as a result of the scandal.
The announcement Thursday in the archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Standard and Times, provided no details of the alleged abuse, saying only that the priests were defrocked for "misconduct involving minors."
Justin Cardinal Rigali declined to comment, though Farrell said he "does offer deep apologies to the victims of sexual abuse."
The dismissals followed similar announcements recently in other cities. The Diocese of Rockville Centre, N.Y., said in January that eight of its priests had been defrocked, and the Archdiocese of Boston, where the child abuse scandal burst into public view in 2002, said June 9 that six of its priests had been defrocked.
Bill Ryan, a spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Thursday that a Vatican office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was handling a "backlog" of cases involving church requests to defrock American priests. He said he didn't know how many had been removed from the priesthood or how many cases were pending.