A newly minted Roman Catholic priest has been removed from his parish in Orange County, N.Y., by church officials for secretly fathering a child while he was attending seminary.

The priest, the Rev. Casmir Manyonyi Mung’aho, 34, was ordained in May after graduating from St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers. He had not told his superiors that he had fathered a child in a consensual relationship with an adult woman, “which he certainly should have done,” Bishop Dominick J. Lagonegro, the regional bishop, told parishioners in a statement read at Mass on Jan. 7 and 8.

Roman Catholic priests make promises to be celibate, and the church also expects its seminarians and pending applicants to be celibate.

“The fact that he is the father of a child was not known to us at the time of his ordination nine months ago,” the bishop said, adding that Father Mung’aho was being removed to “address this matter and reflect upon his responsibilities in a very serious way.”