Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker called out Cardinal Timothy Dolan over the “abomination” of having a funeral for a transgender activist Cecilia Gentili at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in February.
Butker, a devout Catholic, spoke to EWTN about the letter he wrote to the church leader in which he talked about the “scandalous” services held at the iconic New York cathedral, which reportedly consisted of a eulogy with words like “transvestite,” “whore,” “blessed,” and “mother” in Spanish, along with a depiction of Gentili with a halo, IFN reported.
“I’m a Catholic and this is St. Patrick’s Cathedral and there’s all of these things being said when you watch the funeral that are making fun of the Catholic faith, that are making fun of our Lord,” Butker told the reporter.
“This is not acceptable,” he added. “I was waiting on someone to come out and say that this is outrageous. This is an abomination. This should have never happened. This should’ve been stopped. And nothing came.”
“So, I actually went on His Eminence’s [Cardinal Dolan’s] show last year. And they had asked for me to go on the show this year,” Butker continued. “And I sent a letter saying, ‘I would love to go on the show, but I can’t unless something is addressed with what happened at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.’ Someone should be held accountable.”
The Super Bowl-winning kicker called on the church to “take a hard stance.”
“I think sometimes we value what the world says about us instead of what Jesus Christ says about us,” the Chiefs star said. “And so that letter was more encouraging His Eminence, saying, ‘Please put out a strong statement, say that this was awful that happened. It should have never happened. It should have been stopped before it even began.”
“No statement came about from it,” he added. “And I was very disappointed to hear that. And so I do want to clear the air and just say that yes, it was bad what happened at St. Patrick’s, but the letter was really encouraging and pushing his Eminence to make a statement decrying what happened … and I think we have to have leaders, especially in the Catholic church, standing up to all the woke things that are going on in our society.”
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Following the backlash, pastor of St. Patricks, Rev. Enrique Salvo, said in a statement that the church “only knew that family and friends were requesting a funeral Mass for a Catholic, and had no idea our welcome and prayer would be degraded in such a sacrilegious and deceptive way. That such a scandal occurred at ‘America’s Parish Church’ makes it worse.”
Later, Cardinal Dolan lauded the Cathedral officiants for their handling of the services and cutting the them short, NBC New York reported.
“We didn’t know the background. We don’t do FBI checks on people who want to be buried,” Cardinal Dolan said on XiriusXM. “So anyway, then, of course, once the funeral started, is when the trouble started because of the irreverence and the disrespect of the big crowd that was there.”