PITTSBURGH — A Catholic nun who was ordained as an Episcopal priest and then fired in January from her teaching job at Duquesne University has been reassigned to the school's public policy center to teach ethics.

Sister Moni McIntyre was told by university officials that her status as a priest put her at odds with Church teaching. “he is now a publicly proclaimed, official teacher of Anglican doctrine, which differs from Roman Catholic in very important areas,” Duquesne President John E. Murray Jr. told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

According to the Post-Gazette, McIntyre had not told her department of her ordination last December, and university officials learned of it while looking at the Web site for the local Episcopal diocese. She returned from Christmas break to find her classes assigned to other professors and her books removed from a display case in the theology department.

In a statement issued Feb. 1 by Duquesne, Murray praised McIntyre as a “gifted teacher” and said he was “pleased that she will continue as a member of the Duquesne University faculty.”

In the same statement, McIntyre said she was “relieved” she and Murray had reached an agreement allowing her to continue “my scholarship and teaching in my areas of expertise with colleagues and students who mean so much to me.”

McIntyre will now teach ethics, health care ethics and ecology ethics at the university.

Norms adopted by the U.S. bishops and approved by the Vatican require that Catholic theology professors have a “mandatum” from a bishop. A bishops’ committee is currently working on developing recommended procedures for implementing the granting, withholding or withdrawing of the “mandatum.”

Murray said he consulted with the Diocese of Pittsburgh through Auxiliary Bishop David A. Zubik, a member of Duquesne's board of directors, before relieving McIntyre of her teaching duties in the theology department.

Said Bishop Zubik, “I support the president of the university in his desire to keep Duquesne faithful to its Catholic mission.” (From combined wire services)