Bishop Dominique Rey of Fréjus-Toulon has suspended Dom Alcuin (Scott) Reid from the exercise of priestly ministry after Reid was ordained to the priesthood without the bishop’s permission.

According to a statement issued by Father Reid’s monastery (which has been approved by the French diocese as an association of the faithful), Reid was ordained to the priesthood outside France by an unnamed “senior prelate in unimpeded communion with the Holy See.”

Reid, a liturgical scholar, was ordained to the transitional diaconate in Melbourne over three decades ago. In 2010, Melbourne’s leading newspaper reported that the Archdiocese of Melbourne had suspended Reid from the diaconate in 1991 and that Cardinal George Pell and other Melbourne archbishops had asked Reid to seek laicization voluntarily, but that Reid had declined to do so.