James Alison

A friendly bishop, who was once Alison's novice master, hand delivered a letter to Pope Francis in May 2017 appealing his laicization. In the letter, Alison asked the Pope to make his situation regular; he proposed to treat the congregation's letter "as null, and to carry on as before". On 2 July 2017, Pope Francis called Alison directly. According to Alison, Pope Francis told him, "I want you to walk with deep interior freedom, following the Spirit of Jesus. And I give you the power of the keys." Alison believes that, Pope Francis did not perceived the congregation's decision as binding; that he treated him as a priest and granted him the authority to hear confessions.

Alison was a member of the Dominican order – his master's degree is a Dominican lectorate – from 1981 to 1995. In 1996, he wrote to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith telling them that he believed his vows to be null as they were based on the "false premise of gay people being objectively disordered and thus celibacy being obligatory". He offered to let them issue a decree saying that his ordination was null, but they declined, saying it was valid. Instead, the congregation asked him to seek laicisation, but Alison declined: "The form for doing that also required that lies to be told, so, on advice of a canon lawyer, I did nothing and heard nothing". He told Commonweal magazine in 2012 that he was released from the Dominicans without penalty, and that he is uncertain of the validity of his vow of celibacy.

James Alison (born October 10, 1959) is an English Roman Catholic priest and theologian. He was ordained in 1988 and was a member of the Dominican Order in 1981-95. The Congregation for the Clergy informed Alison of his laicization; he appealed this to the Pope and his current canonical status is inconclusive. Alison is noted for his application of René Girard's anthropological theory to Christian systematic theology and for his work on LGBT issues.

James Alison was born on October 10, 1959, the son of Michael Alison and Sylvia Alison (née Haigh). He has a brother and a sister. In Faith Beyond Resentment he describes his family background as "conservative middle-class English evangelical Protestant". His father was Michael Alison (died 2004) who, after leaving the University of Oxford, had spent some time studying theology at Ridley Hall and had gone on to become a prominent Conservative Member of Parliament (1964–1997) and Second Church Estates Commissioner (1987–1997). Alison left the Church of England at the age of eighteen to join the Roman Catholic Church. He studied at Blackfriars College at the University of Oxford, and earned his bachelor's degree and doctorate in theology from the Jesuit theology faculty in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.