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To Give a Defense

Where is the Baby Now? Fr. Frank Pavone’s Words are Inconsistent.

Last updated on: March 10, 2018 at 6:19 pm   by Scott Eric Alt

Where is the Baby Now? Fr. Frank Pavone’s Words are Inconsistent. 2018-03-10T18:19:36-04:00 Scott Eric Alt

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Fr. Frank Pavone can’t seem to keep his story straight. Here—and I have removed from it the image of the aborted baby—is the original post at Priests for Life’s Facebook page. (PFL has since removed said post, but I and others wisely retained a screenshot of it.)

Pavone Altar 2

“Entrusted to us by a pathologist for burial” the post says. So let me understand. A pathologist gave Priests for Life the body of an aborted child, in the belief that Fr. Pavone would bury it. But before that could happen, he (Fr. Pavone) decided to place it on an altar, light some candles, bring in some video cameras, and make a campaign commercial for Donald Trump. Such forethought this man of God has. And later, his bishop condemned the incident and started an investigation.

Okay. So far so good. (Well, maybe not “good.”) But what happened to the baby? Was it buried?

That’s where things get a little confusing. Stay with me, now. I plead your patience.

As Keith Michael Estrada reports here at Patheos Catholic, Fr. Pavone’s first said, in a video on November 8, that the baby had indeed been buried.

PFL has since removed the video from Facebook, and no one seems to know why. Fr. Pavone has no answer for us. Perhaps he said to himself, “Wait, that baby wasn’t buried after all. Silly me. How could I have thought that it was? I’m getting confused. But now I remember. I better remove that video–you know, in order to be an honest man”?

Your guess is as good as mine. I only ask.

“I’ve already celebrated that baby’s funeral,” Fr. Pavone said. The baby, he said, is now “laid to rest.”

Oh. He–Fr. Pavone himself–celebrated a funeral and buried a baby. Hm. Where? When? What cemetery? Would Bishop Zurek of the Diocese of Amarillo look into these matters?

Because, funny thing, but Peter Jesserer Smith at the National Catholic Register writes today that Fr. Pavone’s story has changed. Somewhat. Slightly. Just a little.

Fr. Pavone is now saying that the pathologist—remember him? the personage who, Fr. insists, gave Priests for Life the body for burial—actually gave the body to a Protestant pastor for burial, and he decided to contact Fr. Pavone so that Priests for Life could turn the corpse into a little publicity for Donald Trump. Doing due diligence, he (Fr. Pavone) returned the body to the Protestant pastor, and God only knows what he did with it, Fr. Pavone is washing his hands—you know, kind of like Pilate?—he ain’t responsible for any of this.

I kid you not. Go over to the Register. Fr. Pavone said all this to them. Smith writes:

Father Pavone told the Register that the baby was temporarily entrusted to Priests for Life “through a Protestant pastor who obtained it through a pathologist who obtained it from an abortion facility.” …

According to Father Pavone, he put the pastor in touch with a funeral home for burial. But the baby’s body had not been laid to rest after the service, as Father Pavone revealed the minister reached out to him some time later.

“As the election proceeded and intensified, he indicated to me that the baby was still under his auspices, so to speak; he had access to the body,” Father Pavone continued. “We talked again about showing people again the reality of the aborted child, and so we did that.”

Father Pavone did not identify the pastor, and he declined to provide a general time frame that would indicate when these conservations took place, which he felt might identify him.

On the videos, Father Pavone said the pathologist “entrusted [the baby’s body] to us for burial.” However, Father Pavone told the Register he did not know when the baby would be buried. He said the body was out of his hands and back with the Protestant minister.

Now, wait. A Protestant pastor—Fr. Pavone ain’t telling us who he or she is—originally got the baby. (But I thought Fr. Pavone’s first story, you know, before his bishop got wind of it and rebuked him and started an investigation and Fr. Pavone removed the post from Facebook, was that the pathologist gave the body to Priests for Life. Now we hear that it was really a Protestant pastor, name unknown?

And the Protestant pastor, rather than burying the body, decided to keep it around for a while while he kept a check on how the election was going. And when it turned out that Donald Trump needed a corpse trotted out the weekend before the first Tuesday in November, the Protestant pastor (name unknown) decided to contact Fr. Pavone, because Fr. Pavone knows how to take care of these things, and place a corpse (that’s been laying around for who knows how long?) upon the altar of sacrifice, light some candles, bring in the video cameras, hit record, and make a little commercial.

And Fr. Pavone, who first said that he had the funeral, the baby’s been buried, now says that he really returned it to the Protestant pastor in question (name unknown), and Fr. Pavone has no idea where it is now, it’s out of his hands.

Would Bishop Zurek look into this, please? 806-383-2243. Or e-mail him, dear reader.

I am not letting this story go.

***

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