This is some pretty astonishing news: most of the priests in one prominent American diocese have called for their bishop to step down:

When dozens of priests in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Belleville met Wednesday in Germantown to discuss Bishop Edward Braxton, they knew they had to do something drastic. Their contentious relationship with Braxton had deteriorated to its lowest point in the nearly three years since his installation. But calling for the bishop’s resignation was not on the meeting’s agenda — at first.

“It wasn’t until the very end that we came together and decided we had to do this,” said the Rev. Dennis Voss, pastor of St. Liborius in St. Libory. Braxton “thinks he knows it all and he refuses to listen … Unless we get to this point, he won’t change.”

So the priests crafted a letter asking Braxton to resign. On Friday, they sent it to Cardinal Francis George in Chicago, the region’s top church authority, and Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Vatican’s U.S. ambassador.

Thirty-six of Belleville’s 59 resident parish pastors — the nonvisiting priests who run the churches — have signed the letter, or about 60 percent. Nine other priests, including seven retired pastors, also signed it.

The letter comes two months after Braxton, 63, publicly apologized for spending about $18,000 from restricted diocesan and Vatican funds, which he said he paid back with “a secured gift.” The priests wrote that they have become “increasingly frustrated by the lack of collaborative and consultative leadership.”

“Therefore,” they wrote, “it is requested that Bishop Braxton resign from his office as Bishop of the Diocese of Belleville for his own good, for the good of the Diocese and for the good of the presbyterate.”

Not since 2002, when 58 Boston priests called for the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law during the clergy sex abuse scandal, has there been such a clerical revolt in the American church.

“This is exceedingly rare and very problematic for the bishop,” said David Gibson, author of a book about Pope Benedict XVI. “If a bishop loses his priests, he’s lost his diocese.”

Lawrence Cunningham, a theology professor at the University of Notre Dame, said that the priests have no authority to remove their bishop, but their calls may be heard by the Vatican. “They have no juridical power to make this happen on their own, but they have the moral authority of their collective voice,” Cunningham said.

The letter comes on the heels of another sent to Sambi last month by an order of nuns, the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, nearly 100 of whom live within the diocese’s boundaries.

They said, “There is an unraveling of both trust and hope” and, “There are clear expressions of anger and discouragement on the part of most of the clergy and many of the laity.”

The order’s regional superior, Sister Jan Renz, is on Belleville’s diocesan finance council. She, along with the 15 other members of the council, sent a letter to Braxton in December (also forwarded to George and Sambi), expressing concern about the bishop’s use of Vatican funds.

Some experts suggested that Braxton’s use of those funds could be the reason Rome moves him. The no-confidence vote by the majority of Braxton’s priests gives the Vatican more reason to act, they said.

“I do think that what will happen is that someone will be sent into the diocese to try to establish some kind of reconciliation and/or to ask Bishop Braxton to set aside or retire,” Cunningham said. The Vatican could send a co-adjutor bishop to facilitate a truce, with an eye on becoming Belleville’s next leader.

Braxton could not be reached for comment Friday.