I want to draw your attention to an excellent article on the laicization of Frank Pavone by my friend and former Patheos colleague Henry (formerly Scott) Alt. His blog is worth a follow for all of his content, but I especially want to highlight this post. In this article, Alt goes over the details of a letter, dated May 5, 2017, from Bishop Zurek of the Diocese of Amarillo. Henry lays out the main points of the letter and provides his own commentary, as a father who lost a child to stillbirth.
I appreciate Henry’s passion about how wrong it was for Pavone to exploit a body in that way, and his candor about how traumatic Pavone’s stunt was for people who have experienced the loss of a baby. That’s just one of the reasons his actions were so wrong.
Curiously this letter was posted by Frank Pavone on his own website, even though it provides damning evidence that he was conning the public for years and years. In the letter, Zurek informs Pavone in the very first paragraph that he’s going to be dismissed from the priesthood. He expressly refuses to approve of Pavone’s excardination to any other diocese. The letter even reminds Pavone that he was forbidden to exercise his priestly faculties back in December of 2016. Pavone had no illusion that he was a priest in good standing at any point after that. He had no reason to believe that he had a “new, supportive bishop” or was going to get one. He has been lying all along. He was even in direct disobedience to the bishop when he preached at the funeral of Norma McCorvey.
And he gives two reasons for this dismissal: Pavone’s constant disobedience, and his abuse of a human corpse.
We can see, from this letter, that all the while I was posting demands that Bishop Zurek take action about Pavone, he was doing exactly what I asked– not because of me, but because the Church and basic human decency dictated that what was happening was hideously wrong. I don’t know whether my complaint even registered in the cacophony of complaints he was receiving.
And I do owe Zurek and apology, because I didn’t think he was doing that.
I assumed he was ignoring the situation. We have had so many cases of bishops letting priests run amok, hurting and scandalizing everyone, that I though that was what we’d continue to see with Pavone. I am more pleased that I can express to be proven wrong about that. Reading this letter has surprised me and restored a certain amount of faith. I don’t think I can ever be anything but cynical about the Catholic hierarchy after the past several years, but I now believe Zurek to be an honest man with a conscience, and I’m glad to know he has one.
We can also see from the letter that while Pavone’s fans were harassing me, calling me a heretic, and accusing me of having abortions and lying about them, all for pointing out the obvious, Bishop Zurek was actually seeing the obvious and taking action.
While I was insisting that Pavone wasn’t a priest in good standing and must be violating his bishop’s orders by saying Mass, wearing the collar and so forth, I was accused of calumny and lies. Pavone made threats on his website about “legal and canonical penalties” for anyone who claimed he wasn’t a priest in good standing.
But I was exactly right about Pavone’s status all along.
And we can see that, despite all the gaslighting and lies, it was obvious to Zurek that Pavone lied about that baby.
Indeed, as Henry points out, Pavone’s laicization was in great part because of that baby.
Zurek was as horrified about the baby as I have been this whole time. He recognized immediately that a great wrong had been committed. He told Pavone so in no uncertain terms. Human bodies are not props to make a political statement. They should be given a proper burial and let rest. Fishing a naked human corpse out of formalin and using it in this way is disgusting, even if it had only happened once. And I’ve provided ample evidence that Pavone has been recycling the same two corpses for decades. He is a con artist who had to be stopped.
Bishop Zurek agreed with me, and now Pavone can no longer trick the public into thinking he’s a Catholic priest in good standing. The baby was in great part the reason for this.
For six years now I’ve been demanding that Baby Choice be taken from Pavone and given a Christian burial.
And now I find out that in fact, Baby Choice has buried Pavone.
That’s an excellent way to begin a new year.
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.
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