Marek Bozek to be deported?

(KMOV) -- St. Stanislaus church officials said Sunday that the archdiocese is trying to have Father Marek Bozek deported.
. . .
As for Father Bozek, he is currently here on a visa as an employee of the Catholic Church in connection with his previous assignment in Springfield.

The Archdiocese is allegedly trying to get his visa revoked claiming that he has been excommunicated and as such is no longer an employee.

Attempts to reach the Archdiocese for comment Sunday were unsuccessful.

This report appears to be unsubstantiated...

The immigration issue was discussed back in January and then again in February here:

Marek Bozek was supposedly granted an R-1 (Religious Worker Visa) to work in the U.S. and a question arose about how long he might be employed for St. Stanislaus. From what I saw, there is an initial term of the visa for up to a 3 year period which is renewal for an additional 2 years, but cannot exceed 5 years.

Tim Townsend of the Post Dispatch writes:

Archdiocese issues Bozek statement
By Tim Townsend
08/14/2006 6:09 pm

The St. Louis Archdiocese issued a statement Monday refuting a KMOV report that it was working to have the Rev. Marek Bozek of St. Stanislaus Kostka parish deported.
The archdiocese “has neither initiated nor participated in any procedure regarding the legal status of Fr. Marek Bozek’s residency in the United States,” according to the statement.

... it was [Bishop] Leibrecht, not Burke, who told immigration authorities in the spring about Bozek’s job change.

Recy Moore, a spokeswoman for the Springfield-Cape Girardeau diocese, said Leibrecht was merely following the law when he wrote a letter to immigration authorities in March telling them the diocese no longer employed Bozek.

In an interview Monday, Bozek said he was contacted in May by officials from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who requested details about where he was working. Bozek said he’d been in the process of getting permanent residency approval when he heard from the USCIS, and that St. Stanislaus has retained an attorney to ensure that the priest is not deported.

The immigration laws, we will probably hear later, are "man-made" laws - meaning they can be ignored. After all, Bozek claims to be doing what Jesus would do... "Man-made" laws - this is what we heard countless times about the Church's Canon Law when Archbishop Burke was required to declare the 'priest' and board excommunicated.

Roger Krasnicki, a spokesman for the St. Stanislaus board, said Monday that the congregation orginally feared that because Bozek’s employment visa was granted for work in a different diocese, the USCIS may have reason to revoke the priest’s visa. “But our lawyer now feels we will most probably dodge this bullet,” he said.

We shall see....

The link to Townsend's article is here.