A priest who was barred from Fort Worth churches more than two decades ago and later resurfaced to lead an illicit Latin Mass for Arlington’s Carmelite nuns has now been formally dismissed from the priesthood. Christopher Clay submitted a petition for dismissal to Pope Leo XIV in March, and Bishop Michael Olson of the Diocese of Fort Worth says Clay now lives privately in Dallas, no longer able to celebrate Mass or confer any sacraments.
The dismissal closes out a saga that Bishop Olson and diocesan officials have been tracking since at least 2004, when Clay was first prohibited from celebrating any sacrament in the territory of the Diocese of Fort Worth, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. That original 2004 ban followed the diocese’s discovery that Clay had been quietly celebrating Mass for over a year at St. Mary the Virgin Catholic Church in Arlington while under investigation in Pennsylvania, according to a 1994 report from Bishop Accountability tracing the Fort Worth diocese’s early response. Clay had been placed on leave by the Diocese of Scranton in February 2003 following a 2002 allegation that he sexually abused a minor.
The Star-Telegram’s report notes that Fort Worth Bishop Kevin Vann went further in 2012, issuing a formal decree that barred Clay from representing himself as a Catholic priest anywhere and from setting foot on any Catholic property within the diocese, according to the Detroit Catholic. Despite those repeated bans, Clay led an unauthorized Mass for the Arlington Carmelite nuns in 2024, an act that Bishop Olson publicly disclosed that July alongside news that another suspended Scranton priest, Marshall Roberts, had also been celebrating Latin Mass for the community without permission or faculties.
A Monastery Already at War With the Diocese
The nuns who welcomed Clay into their chapel were, by that point, deep in a separate and bitter standoff with their own bishop. Former prioress Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach had invited the suspended Scranton priests to celebrate Mass at the Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity, per Bishop Olson’s own statement to the faithful of the diocese, released in July 2024. That invitation came against the backdrop of a dispute that began in April 2023, when Olson opened a canonical investigation into allegations that Gerlach had broken her vow of chastity with a priest — a conflict that later spilled into civil court when the nuns filed a $1 million lawsuit against Olson over his seizure of electronic equipment during that inquiry, according to reporting cited by Where Peter Is…