Anthony Cipolle serves the Eucharist for the first time after becoming a priest at his ordination at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2017. He has since been formally removed from the Catholic Church. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

The Vatican has defrocked a former Maine priest several years after he was accused of having inappropriate relationships with parishioners.

Anthony Cipolle, 59, was formally laicized on April 22, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland confirmed Monday, though he had been fired from the Maine church in 2020.

Diocese spokesperson Molly DiLorenzo said Monday that Cipolle requested the laicization. She declined to answer further questions about the diocese’s position on Cipolle’s request.

With his laicization, Cipolle is no longer allowed to call himself a priest or administer the sacraments.

Cipolle did not answer a text message Monday asking about the decision.

In 2023, he told the Press Herald that he had gone on voluntary leave about a year before his expulsion and didn’t want to be a priest any more, but he wanted to be compensated by the diocese for his loss of housing and health insurance. DiLorenzo did not answer questions about whether the church had agreed to pay Cipolle for any of those benefits.

Cipolle was ordained in 2017 and assigned to St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Bangor, where he offered spiritual direction to parishioners, including Melissa Kearns, who told the Press Herald in an extensive interview last year that despite his vow of celibacy, Cipolle pushed her into a sexual relationship.

He has denied any forced relationship with her.

Kearns’ lawyer, Jessica Arbour, said Monday that they learned about the laicization last month.

She said the laicization was good news, but she was concerned that it was never announced, given what she called his history of exploiting people in vulnerable situations.

Kearns said last year that Cipolle took advantage of her vulnerability as someone dealing with major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Weeks before he met Kearns in August 2018, Cipolle had been renting a house with another woman, Renee Henneberry Clark, whose estranged brother-in-law shot her to death following a physical altercation with Cipolle that July. A judge said that Cipolle’s role in the tragedy could not be overstated and that Cipolle “clearly inserted himself” into the situation.

After leaving Maine, Cipolle continued working in jobs where he was tasked with providing spiritual guidance and comfort. He was most recently a resident chaplain at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. A spokesperson for the hospital said Monday that he no longer works there.

The spokesperson did not respond to questions about when Cipolle left the organization and whether he left voluntarily.

“I hope he never finds himself in a position of being able to exploit vulnerable people again and that definitely includes hospitals,” Arbour said. “All the more reason why this needs to be blasted out there.”