Pope Francis Fires Texas' Bishop Strickland Over Constant Criticism

A conservative Texas-based bishop got the boot by Catholicism's top dog after constantly criticizing him as too liberal ... and after refusing to resign when asked.

Pope Francis announced Saturday that Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, TX had been relieved of his pastoral governance over his area -- which effectively means he's fired. For now, PF is appointing a bishop from Austin to oversee Tyler's diocese until they find a permanent replacement.

The ousting comes a few months after Pope Francis sent some holy types to investigate Bishop Strickland and see how he was running things out there deep in the heart of Texas ... this after accusations of him teaching "doctrinally unorthodox claims" in his sermons.

Of course, the real impetus of this probably lies in the fact that Strickland has been bashing Frank for a long time now -- very vocally accusing him of twisting up the Catholic faith with his fairly progressive views on a number of social issues ... LGBTQ+ inclusion, abortion, etc.

In fact, just the other day ... Pope Francis said he was cool with transgender people getting baptized into the Catholic faith, and even signed off on them serving as godparents to Catholic kids, assuming it wouldn't lead to any "scandal" as he put it in his remarks.