"Father Alfredo Rosa Borges has been suspended from his duties," and faces ex-communication, a diocesan spokesman at Campos de Goytacazes, a northern town in Rio state, said on Tuesday.
Borges is seen posing naked in front of a mirror holding his cell phone in pictures posted last week via smartphone service Whatsapp, which have since appeared in online media.
Rio daily reported he had admitted sending suggestive messages to a woman who later posted them but denied having an intimate relationship with her.
"An investigation has been opened, but the photo comprises a transgression for the Church," the bishop of Campos, Roberto Francisco, told .
Worshippers at Borges' Santo Antonio church reported he had first insisted that the picture was fake but then conceded it was him and explained that "we are all sinners".
Borges authors a blog where he expresses conservative views on social issues, dubbing kissing a "grave sin" and sexual liaisons as a "serious moral disorder as normally it leaves aside and abandons the procreative aspect."
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Priest suspended for sending nude selfie
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