Vatican upholds excommunication of deacon after son's molestation by priest

Lafayette diocese had not filed for federal bankruptcy protection as of Friday

The Vatican’s doctrinal office has upheld the excommunication of Scott Peyton, a Louisiana deacon who resigned from his ministry in 2023 after his teenage son was molested by a fellow clergyman, rejecting his appeal on technical grounds tied to his joining an Anglican congregation.

Peyton learned of the decision Friday in a meeting with Bishop J Douglas Deshotel of the Diocese of Lafayette. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), the Vatican entity in charge of Catholic clerical discipline, rejected the appeal on May 22, about two years after Peyton filed it. According to the DDF documents, shared with the Guardian by canon attorney Dawn Eden Goldstein, who represented Peyton in his appeal, Peyton was presented with the rejection on Friday.

The DDF cited technical grounds, saying Peyton had joined an Anglican congregation, “published [that] fact … on social media” and therefore refused to submit to the Catholic pope, who since May 2025 has been Leo XIV. The office’s documents acknowledged that the body “does not fail to note … that the circumstances surrounding this situation are indeed tragic.” But in joining an Anglican congregation, “deacon Peyton intentionally separated himself” from the Catholic church, and his excommunication was proper, the DDF’s documents said.

“This act of joining a separated faith community by its very nature is an act of refusal of submission to the Roman pontiff and a refusal of communion with the members of the church subject to him,” the DDF said. “It is for this reason that … excommunication is incurred by the very carrying out of the act itself,” the office added.

In appealing, Peyton argued that “there was no pastoral good to be accomplished” by excommunicating him. He also said his wife and six children felt unwelcome in the Catholic church because of his excommunication, meaning it had “harmed the spiritual lives of eight Catholics” in one fell swoop.

Peyton filed a formal appeal in May 2024, starting a process that generally should be completed in three months. It was not until October 2024 — five months later — that Peyton was notified that the DDF was in receipt of his appeal material and reviewing it.

In a joint statement on Sunday, Goldstein said Peyton intends to appeal the DDF’s verdict. “While I am disappointed, I am not surprised,” Peyton said in the statement, which also clarified that he had since moved on from the Anglican church to a nondenominational congregation. “Apparently, according to Bishop Deshotel, finding a faith community where my family can worship without reliving the trauma endured is a greater scandal to the Diocese of Lafayette than the sexual abuse of a child. I find that deeply troubling.”

“Although my client absolutely rejects the DDF’s decision … he notes that the DDF shows far more sensitivity to the harms that his family has suffered than Bishop Deshotel ever has,” Goldstein said in her statement on Sunday.

Peyton in 2012 was ordained into the Diocese of Lafayette — about 135 miles (217 km) west of New Orleans — as a deacon. Deacons are largely similar to priests, though the former can be married and the latter cannot. In 2018, Guidry confessed to molesting Peyton’s teenage son, Oliver, while they ministered together at St Peter’s church in Morrow, Louisiana. Authorities arrested Guidry, who ultimately pleaded guilty to abusing Oliver, an altar server. Guidry, 83, was later treated to a farewell lunch by his church — for which the Lafayette diocese was forced to apologize — and received a seven-year prison sentence.

In 2021, Peyton said he, his wife, Letitia, and Oliver secured a $350,000 out-of-court settlement from Lafayette’s diocese. The Peytons went on to become advocates for clergy survivors. In December 2023, Peyton decided he was no longer a good fit to serve as a Lafayette diocese deacon, resigned and temporarily joined an Anglican congregation, all of which he disclosed on social media. About three months later, Deshotel issued a decree telling Peyton he was considered to have severed ties with the Catholic church and had been excommunicated with immediate effect. News of the excommunication earned international headlines in March 2024, with many outlets characterizing the situation as a remarkably harsh consequence for a man whose son was sexually abused by a fellow Catholic clergyman.

Pious Catholics view excommunication as the most severe punishment there is, something doled out to essentially shock sinners into rethinking behavior before death condemns them to eternal damnation. The punishment prevents those who incur it from engaging in certain sacraments, such as holy communion, which is central to the Catholic faith. Peyton was left to join history’s other Catholic excommunicates, including Henry VIII (over a divorce and remarriage), Martin Luther (for initiating the Protestant Reformation) and Napoleon Bonaparte (for annexing to France the Papal States in Italy).

At Friday’s meeting, Goldstein’s statement said, Deshotel admitted that the imprisoned Michael Guidry remained in the Catholic priesthood. Peyton said he understood Guidry was suspended from being able to publicly minister. He also cited comments Guidry made at a public hearing where he unsuccessfully requested parole, during which he talked about providing spiritual direction while incarcerated and considering himself to still be a priest. “That is the scandal,” Peyton said in his statement on Sunday. “That’s the contradiction.”

The US’s reckoning with the worldwide, decades-old Catholic clergy abuse crisis all but began within the Lafayette diocese when one of its priests, Gilbert Gauthe, pleaded guilty in 1985 to molesting several boys he met through his ministry. In March, Louisiana state prosecutors charged a Lafayette diocese priest, Korey LaVergne, with felony indecent behavior with a juvenile in connection with allegations that he inappropriately touched a child. He later pleaded not guilty, and the case remained unresolved as of Sunday. The Lafayette news outlet KADN reported in July that the local diocese had hired well-known bankruptcy attorney Frank LoCoco. As of Peyton’s excommunication-related meeting with Deshotel, the Lafayette diocese was not among the more than 40 US Catholic religious institutions which had filed for federal bankruptcy protection amid the litigious and financial fallout of the worldwide church’s clergy molestation scandal.

Peyton; the DDF’s prefect, the cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández; and its secretary, the archbishop John Joseph Kenney, signed the documents. The DDF said it still hoped that there can eventually be reconciliation with Peyton.