A Nigerian diocese announced on Friday that four deacons were ordained earlier this month under false pretenses, after a priest claiming to be their religious superior presented false documentation authorizing their ordination.
The Diocese of Lokoja, in northern Nigeria, said in a July 19th statement that it was “deceived” and “misled” — and that it discovered a ruse when one of the men was recognized after the ordination, by people who had seen him already presenting himself as a priest and simulating the Holy Eucharist.
The Lokoja diocese said that since it has discovered the fraud, it is “now seeking appropriate canonical means to address this unfortunate matter.”
So what might that mean? What’s the status of those deacons? What happens next?
The Pillar explains — or at least considers the possibilities, in a complicated situation.
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Ok, so what happened exactly?
According to its statement, Bishop Martin Olorunmolu of Lokoja was approached by a priest earlier this year, who said he was the superior general of the “Congregation of the Paraclete Missionaries, Nigeria Delegation.”
That language is a bit confusing, since a superior general is usually the head of a religious institute, and not merely the head of a division, province, or region of one.
But the priest, who presented himself as Fr. Stephen Obioma Nwaigwe, told Bishop Olorunmolu that the Paraclete Missionaries community was an association of priests and brothers, founded in a Tanzanian diocese.
The priest had some paperwork to back that up. He explained that the community had seven priests and 15 brothers working in Nigeria, and that they needed a bishop to ordain four of their seminarians as transitional deacons.
The bishop asked for the paperwork, and one month later, Fr. Nwaigwe came back with seminary records and recommendations, and with dimissorial letters — important canonical letters which would allow Bishop Olorunmolu to ordain them, while incardinating them in the Paraclete Missionary community, rather than in his own diocese.
With all that squared away, the diocese went ahead with the ordinations on July 12. But after the Mass, someone apparently recognized one of the men — and told the diocese that he had been at a local military base impersonating a priest, and simulating Masses.
The diocese looked into things, and one week later, said the men were frauds, and that diocesan officials had been deceived.
What does that word, incardination, mean?
Every deacon and priest in the Catholic Church must be formally attached, at all times in his ministry, to some particular church — like a diocese — or to some religious order, in a permanent relationship which determines who his ecclesiastical superior is, and which gives him the right to ongoing sustenance — in other words, the place where he is incardinated has a responsibility to make sure he isn’t homeless or destitute.
Incardination comes alongside ordination to the diaconate — when one becomes a deacon, he is incardinated in some diocese, religious order, or ecclesiastical structure, either that which is led by the ordaining bishop, or the structure on whose behalf the men are being ordained.
In this case, part of the canonical questions up for debate is where the ordained deacons are incardinated — and what the consequences of that will be.
Are the Paraclete Missionaries a real religious order?
It doesn’t immediately appear so.
To date, the Diocese of Morogoro, Tanzania, where the order is supposedly based, has not made a statement, or responded to media questions.
The Paraclete Missionaries are not listed in any directory of religious congregations and orders.
And there are a few things worth noting. The Pillar found two Facebook pages apparently connected to the Paraclete Missionaries — one was launched in May, and the other in June.
A YouTube channel supposedly connected to the order has posted seven videos. The first was posted in 2021, but appears to be an ad for a Facebook page called “Traditional Catholic Beauty.” The second, also posted in 2021, was the republication of a TikTok video in which seminarians or clerics could be seen chanting in a church. Some more recent videos purport to be reflections from members of the order, though web searches of their names yield no relevant results.
And there is a strange coincidence, at least, about the name of the priest who held himself out as the superior of the order. The Lokoja diocesan statement said the priest exercising authority over the order — who approached the bishop about ordination — was Fr. Stephen Obioma Nwaigwe.
Last year, a laicized priest of the same name, Stephen Nwaigwe, was charged in a neighboring Nigerian state with sexually assaulting a teenager — with Vanguard News reporting last November that Nwaigwe had continued to exercise priestly ministry after he was dismissed from a religious order.
While he was taken last year to police custody as the trial began, it is not clear whether that priest remains incarcerated, or whether he is the same priest who approached the Lokoja diocese.
So where are the men incardinated?
That’s not entirely clear. In fact, it’s not even clear that they are incardinated, at all.
It is probably the case that their ordinations were valid, because the bishop intended to ordain them as deacons, and presumably observed the form required for valid ordination — unless the men are actually not baptized.
And canon law stipulates that “through the reception of the diaconate, a person becomes a cleric and is incardinated” into some ecclesiastical structure, like a diocese or religious order, which is able to incardinate.
In other words, ordination to the diaconate includes both a sacramental reality and a juridic act, namely, an act of administration which has some effect in law — either incardination in a particular diocese, or in a religious order with the faculty to incardinate.
In this case, the diocesan bishop ordained the men to the diaconate, albeit under false pretenses — the dimissorial letters he had were apparently not real.
At the same time, he did not intend the juridic act of incardinating them in his diocese — it was his understanding they would instead be incardinated in their probably-not-real religious order.
That might leave the men in a very strange situation: making them acephalous, or headless, deacons. And while they are automatically suspended from exercising their diaconal orders — for reasons we’ll discuss below — headless clergy is not a situation the Holy See is likely to abide for very long.
Things get a little more clear if, by chance, the Paraclete Missionaries are an actually existing institute of consecrated life, and the men actually belong to it.
In that case, the men are likely incardinated in their religious institute, per canon 266 §2 of the Code of Canon Law: “Through the reception of the diaconate, a perpetually professed religious or a definitively incorporated member of a clerical society of apostolic life is incardinated as a cleric in the same institute or society unless, in the case of societies, the constitutions establish otherwise.”
As it stands, there is little evidence to suggest the Paraclete Missionaries are a real religious order of any kind, or — if it is — that the men in Nigeria are actually members. But if those things are true, the men are probably actually incardinated there.
In either case, the men seem to be — as we’ll discuss below — suspended from the exercise of their diaconal orders. And the Diocese of Lokoja, where the men were ordained, will likely take the lead in addressing the situation with the Holy See.
What happens now?
Canon law stipulates that a man ordained with false dimissorial letters is ipso facto suspended from exercising his orders. And, following that norm, the Diocese of Lokoja has been clear that the four men will not be permitted to exercise diaconal ministry.
Further, if any of them were pretending to be priests, when they were not, that would compound the illicitness of their ordinations, and prevent them from exercising ministry — although given the totality of circumstances, the illicit nature of the ordinations seems already pretty well-established.
It seems most likely that the diocese will write to the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy, and petition for the men to be laicized — and likely that the Vatican will grant that petition quickly, given the circumstances.
The men involved could also face some canonical penalty — including the imposition of an ecclesiastical fine — for falsifying ecclesiastical documents.
The bishop himself might also have a canonical problem to deal with. The law establishes that a bishop who ordains someone else’s subject without dimissorial letters is “prohibited from conferring orders for one year.”
In this case, the bishop is likely to argue that he was ignorant of the full situation, and had no intention of violating the law. The Vatican will likely be satisfied with that.
But as with many elements of this unusual story, that remains to be seen.
