The Archbishop of Recife declared that everybody involved in procuring the abortion (the girl's mother, the doctors) was excommunicated.

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Jamming devices in the Sistine Chapel should block all electronic communication and anyone tweeting would in any case risk being excommunicated.

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Bountiful was set up in 1946 after half-a-dozen men were excommunicated from the mainstream Mormon church, which banned polygamy in 1890.

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Athletes always face the terror of being excommunicated from the group.

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Luther was excommunicated from the Catholic Church four years later.

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Archbishop Lefebvre announced in 1988 that he intended to ordain Williamson, and three other priests, as bishops, and did so despite warnings that he would be excommunicated.

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But for attacking Logan, he was excommunicated from polite society.

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Bishop Richard Williamson was one of four bishops excommunicated 20 years ago by the Church for belonging to a group that rebelled against the Vatican's modernizing reforms in the 1960s.

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On their recommendation, the Vatican excommunicated him in January.

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Predictably, in a strictly Catholic France where actors were excommunicated and refused burial in consecrated ground (though churchmen patronised the theatre and wrote plays themselves), the usual dour moral lessons were drawn.

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On the continent, there was John the Redhead, known in France as Jean le Roux, duke of Brittany in 1237, who took on the clergy and was excommunicated, but managed to talk his way out of it.

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