Pope is an Episcopalian. No, not that Pope.

Rt. Rev. Clarence C. Pope Jr., former Episcopal Bishop of Ft. Worth and multiple Catholic convert has returned to the Episcopal Church, again! Rev. Pope has left the Episcopal Church a grand total of three times to join the Catholic Church, only to eventually return to the Episcopal Church. Now he has done it again! David Virtue gives us the scoop on the very capricious clergyman.

Pope, 76, announced August 2007 that he was returning to the Roman Catholic Church. He was the second bishop in as many months to leave The Episcopal Church for Rome. The Rt. Rev. Dan Herzog, Bishop of Albany, recently renounced his orders following his retirement and returned to the Roman Catholic Church.

This was the third time Pope had left the Episcopal Church and gone to Rome.

Bishop Pope was first received into full communion with the Catholic Church in the mid-1980s. According to a Roman Catholic priest who has followed the bishop’s wanderings, Bishop Pope, facing surgery, returned to the Catholic Church. This lasted a few months. His ordination was delayed longer than he had expected and he returned to ECUSA. “This second return to the Catholic Church was kept very quiet, however; very few people seemed aware of it, and a priest on the staff of Saint Luke’s in Baton Rouge adamantly maintained that the Bishop and Mrs. Pope were at the altar rail there consistently every Sunday.

Pope once again, left The Episcopal Church in October 1994. He denied then that he was leaving, right up until the day he left, said a source. “When he made the announcement, he said he planned to seek ordination as a Roman Catholic priest. He told us he had known for the previous two years that he would go to Rome,” said Katie Sherrod, a liberal in the diocese.

Now he has done it again.

So you know there has to be a joke in here somewhere. Everybody join in….

I haven’t seen a Pope this confused since…

  • That Papal mass in Papua New Guinea with the half naked woman in the tribal outfit did the readings.
  • The Pope looked in his closet and said “I can’t make up my mind today. Should I wear white, white, or white?”
  • The Pope asked “What do you mean the Muslims didn’t like my speech?”
  • The Pope watched the James Cameron documentary on the Bones of Jesus and remarked to Cardinal Sodano “Is this right? Crap, now I have to get a real job!”
  • The Pope read the secrets of Fatima and yelled to the camerlengo, “Hey! Who lost the last page?”

Your turn.