MyCatholicSource.com - 'Quick Help' Page: Can A Wicked Priest Validly Administer Sacraments?

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Yes. According to the Catechism of the Council of Trent...

"...a Sacrament is validly administered even by the wicked [priest], provided all the essentials have been duly observed. For we are to believe that all these depend not on the merit of the minister, but are operated by the virtue and power of Christ our Lord."

In fact, an unworthy minister (providing he has the proper intention) has no effect whatsoever on the validity of the Sacrament...

"The effect of the Sacraments does not depend on the worthiness or unworthiness of the one who administers them, but on the merits of Jesus Christ, who instituted them, and on the worthy dispositions of those who receive them." (Baltimore Catechism)

"Remember that the evil lives of wicked men are not prejudicial to God's sacraments, by rendering them either invalid or less holy." (St. Augustine, Doctor of the Church)

"The evil life of a bishop or a priest does not invalidate either the baptism of an infant, or the consecration of the Eucharist, or other ecclesiastical duties performed for the faithful." (Pope Innocent III)

"For the unworthiness of the minister does not make void the Sacraments he administers; since the Sacraments derive their efficacy from the Blood of Christ, independently of the sanctity of the instrument, or, as scholastic language expresses it, the Sacraments work their effect ex opere operato ['by the very fact of the action's being performed']." (Pope Pius XI, "Ad Catholici Sacerdotii", 1935 A.D.)

Although an unworthy minister doesn't invalidate the Sacrament, such a minister does sin by his improper behavior...

"It should never be forgotten that the Sacraments, although they cannot lose the divine efficacy inherent in them, bring eternal death and perdition to him who dares administer them unworthily. Holy things, it cannot be too often repeated, should be treated holily and with due reverence. To the sinner, says the Prophet, God has said: Why dost thou declare my justices, and take my covenant in thy mouth, seeing that thou hast hated discipline? If then, for him who is defiled by sin it is unlawful to speak on divine things, how enormous the guilt of that man, who, conscious of many crimes, dreads not to accomplish with polluted lips the holy mysteries, to take them into his befouled hands, to touch them, and to present and administer them to others? All the more since St. Denis says that the wicked may not even touch the symbols, as he calls the Sacraments. It therefore becomes the first duty of the minister of holy things to follow holiness of life, to approach with purity the administration of the Sacraments, and so to exercise himself in piety, that, from their frequent administration and use, he may every day receive, with the divine assistance, more abundant grace." (Catechism of the Council of Trent)

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