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Only a few dozen cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church have been excommunicated. A cardinal is a Roman Catholic priest, deacon, or bishop entitled to vote in a papal election. They are collectively known as the College of Cardinals. Excommunication—literally, the denial of communion—means that a person is barred from participating in the Sacraments or holding ecclesiastical office. (1311), promulgated by Pope Clement V during the Council of Vienne, extended suffrage in papal election to excommunicated cardinals in an attempt to limit schisms.[1]
This list includes only cardinals who have been explicitly excommunicated by a pope or ecumenical council, rather than those who (depending on one's interpretation) may have been excommunicated latae sententiae. For example, several precepts of papal election law prescribed automatic excommunication, such as of the Lateran Council which prohibited election by one-third, and Pope Pius X's , which made the exercise of the jus exclusivae by any cardinal punishable by excommunication.[2][3] It also does not include excommunicated quasi-cardinals (cardinals elevated by antipopes) or clerics excommunicated before receiving the red hat.
Many excommunicated cardinals reconciled (most often with the successor of their excommunicator) and had their offices restored. Some would later be elected pope; for example, Formosus and Sergius III.
Pope Formosus, who was posthumously exhumed and tried in the Cadaver Synod, had previously been excommunicated by his predecessor as pope; all the participants in the Cadaver Synod themselves were later excommunicated
He corresponded secretly with Frederick III of Sicily and with Philip IV of France; and refused to surrender to the pope the fortresses that he possessed
Rehabilitated by Benedict XI (1303–1304) and reinstated by Clement V on December 17, 1305[8]
He corresponded secretly with Frederick III of Sicily and with Philip IV of France; and refused to surrender to the pope the fortresses that he possessed
Rehabilitated by Benedict XI (1303–1304) and reinstated by Clement V on December 17, 1305[8]