Catholic priest who finances abortions remains unpunished by bishop
It is my personal belief that the Archbishop did force this action but the Vatican.
I imagine there were those in the Vatican that told the Archbishop that he had to excommunicate this priest or else.
I am certain that there was pressure and people who emailed or tried to contact the Vatican over that Article.
Sometimes the Pope or the Vatican gets very busy, but when they get deluged with emails, it sometimes help someone focus on a problem.
For some, they realize they must take action because they are failing God.
For others, they take action to stop the deluge of correspondence.
I feel that the Archbishop falls into the category of: I need to do something to prevent all this correspondence from preventing me from getting to other work.
For others, which I feel are in the Vatican, it is: I cannot believe I have allowed this to go on this long. I must do something now for the good of the church.
Action has now been taken, and it is not the defrocking of a priest but an excommunication of a priest.
Catholic priest who finances abortions remains unpunished by bishop
One interesting thing about this article is they refer to the Archbishop as Archbishop, not Cardinal. In the earlier article, he was referred to Cardinal.
I personally believe that the Vatican has stepped in at this point, and this is not the doing of the Archbishop but the hand of the Vatican.
There is another article recently on the Archdiocese of Barcelona. It is about a priest who resigned from the board of a hospital (that dispensed RU486), and he resigned as pastor of his parish (which was named after the hospital).
There are two other hospitals in the Archdiocese of Barcelona performing abortions.