The Roman Catholic Church excommunicated one of its bishops last week. Said the bishop blandly: "I consider today one of the happiest days of my life."
It was not the first time Dom Carlos Duarte da Costa, onetime Bishop of Botucatu in Sao Paulo, had been in his church's black books. In 1934, he publicly refused to follow a papal nunciate's political instructions. He was thereupon quietly retired, given the honorary title of Bishop of Maura, no diocese. From the outside, Duarte took an increasingly critical view of what he considered his church's political leanings. He became...
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