Catholic priest Father Frank Pavone fired back Monday night after reportedly being defrocked by the Vatican for political reasons, charging that his dismissal was due to cancel culture in the Catholic Church that needs “to be exposed.”
Pavone, who is the founder of Priests for Life, has become known for blasting President Biden and Democrats on social media.
The Catholic News Agency (CNA) obtained a letter from Archbishop Christophe Pierre to U.S. bishops that claimed Pavone was dismissed for his social media activity and “persistent disobedience of the lawful instructions of his diocesan bishop.” In an email to the CNA, Pavone said that the news outlet had learned of the move before he had.
On Monday, Pavone spoke with Fox News host Laura Ingraham about the news.
“This is actually the culmination of 21 years of abuse by church authorities to me and to my ministry despite the fact that we help the Vatican,” he said. “We help to run some of the operations out of the pope’s mission to the United Nations. We help the secretary of state with international pro-life issues. We run the largest ministry for healing after abortion, for which Pope Francis has personally encouraged me to keep going on it. We do all kinds of other pro-life work which many of our viewers are familiar.”
Pavone then attributed his apparent dismissal to cancel culture. A 2020 tweet from Pavone referred to “supporters of this goddamn loser Biden and his morally corrupt, America-hating, God hating Democrat party.”
“Why are they doing this?” he asked. “A lot of it obviously is connected with the cancel culture that comes against supporters of President Trump and critics of the Democrat Party and we’re only gonna get louder about that. We’re not going to be silenced.”
Pavone added that he would continue to be a leader in the pro-life movement.
“My vocation is to be a priest and to be a full-time pro-life leader and I don’t intend to walk away from either one of those,” he stated. Pavone also said he would appeal to the pope to reverse the decision.
“If the pope signs off on something, what they mean is there’s nobody in the church above the pope, we all understand this. But that doesn’t mean there’s no way to change this. The pope himself can reverse it, the next pope can reverse, and the people – I’m appealing to the people of God to continue working with us and show their support for this work of saving lives and healing hearts,” he said.
“It’s a cancel culture in the church. It’s got to be exposed and it’s got to be resisted,” Pavone concluded.