Father Alberto Cutié to join Episcopal church

The Rev. Alberto Cutié, the celebrity priest removed from his Miami Beach church after photos of him kissing and embracing a woman appeared in the pages of a Spanish-language magazine earlier this month, will leave the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami to join the Episcopal church.

The small and private ceremony will happen early this afternoon at Trinity Cathedral, the church's South Florida headquarters in downtown Miami. Bishop Leo Frade, head of the Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida, will officiate.

Later, Cutié is expected to announce that he will marry his girlfriend, whom media reports have cited as 35-year-old Ruhama Buni Canellis, a divorced mother living in Miami Beach.

Cutié got into trouble with the Archdiocese of Miami earlier this month when compromising pictures of the 40-year old cleric were published in the Spanish-language magazine TVnotas. The magazine's cover showed the priest in blue shorts lying on his back embracing a woman with long brown hair, a violation of his vow of chastity. Additional photos inside the magazine showed him kissing the woman.

Such a relationship is not prohibited in the more liberal Episcopal church, which considers itself the "middle way'' between Protestantism and Catholicism. It ordains women and has an openly gay bishop.

(Via Miami Herald)