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Frank Pavone Has Been Laicized

Frank Pavone Has Been Laicized

Last updated on: December 17, 2022 at 10:50 pm by Mary Pezzulo

Frank Pavone Has Been Laicized 2022-12-17T22:50:13-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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This has been a long time coming.

The Vatican, moving at a glacial pace as the Vatican always does, has dismissed “Father” Frank Pavone from the clerical state.

A letter sent to the US bishops on December 13, obtained today by Catholic News Agency, proclaims that Frank Pavone, the founder of Priests for Life, has been dismissed from the priesthood for his “blasphemous communications on social media” and “persistent disobedience to the lawful instructions of his diocesan bishop.” This decision was issued by the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Clergy on November 9th. The decision is final and not subject to appeal. Frank Pavone is no longer a priest.

Readers who have been with me from the beginning know that I’ve been following the dishonest and scandalous actions of Frank Pavone from 2016, when he decorated an altar with a naked corpse as a political stunt. I didn’t expect my denunciation of his actions to be controversial. If you actually believe that an unborn baby is a human being, you’ll be disgusted by such sacrilegious treatment of human remains. But I was accused of only hating him because he was a Republican.

The next thing I knew I was thrown into a years-long investigation trying to find out where he’d gotten those human remains in the first place. The only conclusion I was able to come to is that he’d been keeping a pair of infant bodies in formalin without burial for decades, claiming from time to time that he’d given them a proper burial, and I stand by every word of that story. If there’s some other explanation for why the identical corpses were described and photographed at so many media appearances, I’d love to hear it. Maybe there really is another answer, but if anything like what appears to be true is the case, it’s a deplorable fraud he’s committed in plain sight. I can’t even believe it’s legal. I’m still shocked and scandalized that of all the things I’ve written, that didn’t receive the most attention. There is no excuse for any human being of conscience to treat human corpses with such disregard.

Next, I discovered that Frank Pavone wasn’t even a priest in good standing, and that blog post went viral. Pavone quickly changed his website, which was documented by my Patheos colleague Sean P. Dailey. His acolytes kept assuring me over and over again that I was mistaken or lying, and I kept telling them to call the diocese after which I didn’t hear back. Meanwhile, Pavone threatened everyone who called him a priest not in good standing with “civil and canonical penalties” if we kept telling the truth. He claimed to have a “supportive bishop” but refused to say who the bishop is. His appearances at parishes and other places where he’d need a celebret to present himself as a priest grew conspicuously few and far between. I stood my ground. He stood his.

Pavone sputtered and lied when it was revealed that his protégé, the tragic and exploited Norma McCorvey AKA Jane Roe, was revealed to have faked her conversion. His other protégé, the odious racist Abby Johnson, continued to make more and more of a fool of herself and even appears to have taken part in the January 6th insurrection. If trees are known by their fruit, we can judge what kind of tree Pavone has been.

The Diocese of Amarillo dismissed Pavone’s foolish tweets in 2020 and told us all to disregard and ignore him, which we were all longing to do.

From 2016 to 2021, Frank Pavone went from the unofficial king of the pro-life movement to a ridiculous and unstable sidelined figure, saying crass things on Twitter to the consternation of many. And now, he has been officially laicized. According to that CNA article, he’s still sputtering and claiming he had no idea. Just as he had no idea Norma McCorvey had been manipulated into that conversion. Just as he had no idea he wasn’t a priest in good standing.

I have a number of questions. First of all, why did this take so long? Pavone’s outrageous behavior has been scandalizing the faithful for years and years unchecked. He should have been laicized in 2016.

Secondly, why didn’t the Diocese of Amarillo make a more public statement when Pavone was not a priest in good standing all this time?

Finally, if Pavone is no longer a priest and yet he said Mass on camera today, as the CNA article reports, doesn’t that mean he’s earned a sententiae ferendae excommunication now? I’m far from a canon lawyer but I thought that was the rule.

Most of all, I’m just glad this is over.

Goodbye, Mister Frank Pavone. I don’t think you’ll really disappear from the public eye, but goodbye to what shreds of legitimacy you had left. Goodbye to your lies and abuse. It’s been quite a six-year adventure for me. I hope you had fun while it lasted.

image via Pixabay

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, visit our donate page.

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