How long has Fr. Frank Pavone had that fetus?

ary Pez­zu­lo posts the fol­low­ing obser­va­tion from a read­er. This is in ref­er­ence to Fr. Frank Pavone’s pro-Trump video. (You know the one I mean, in which Fr. placed an abort­ed fetus on the altar of sac­ri­fice and spoke on a polit­i­cal cause dear to his heart. Yes, that one.)

A dead baby VERY SIMILAR to this one was put on pub­lic dis­play in Char­lotte before the 2012 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion. When asked what hap­pened to the baby’s remains after the “event,” which fea­tured the baby in an open cas­ket on the side­walk out­side a Catholic church … Fr. Pavone would not say any­thing oth­er than that he has a memo­r­i­al to the unborn in New York that his min­istry man­ages. The rea­son I note the sim­i­lar­i­ty … is that the bruis­ing and dis­col­oration are due to the effects of a saline abor­tion, a late-term abor­tion pro­ce­dure no longer per­formed in the U.S. (Dila­tion & Curet­tage has been the pre­ferred method since the mid-1990s.) More than one per­son involved with the Char­lotte “event” told me the baby’s remains are kept in a con­tain­er with formalde­hyde, and that Fr. Pavone had cus­tody of the con­tain­er.

Vick­ie Arm­strong also makes note of this curi­ous detail.

And it is true. No doc­tor has per­formed a saline abor­tion in the U.S. since 1996. This is because of the risk of failed abor­tions. You can, if you choose, do a Google Image search of “saline abor­tion” and see for your­self what hap­pens to a child. I won’t post the pic­tures here. But a saline abor­tion caus­es a dis­tinc­tive, pur­plish-black dis­col­oration of the entire body. The rea­son I note this is because the video that Fr. Pavone filmed on the eve of the elec­tion shows a child that looks just as one would who had been a vic­tim of saline abor­tion. It was all very humane to the poor child. Yes?

Some­where, in an arti­cle in the main­stream press (which I can’t find now), I read that the child was in fact a saline abor­tion vic­tim. (If I lat­er find the sto­ry, I will update this post with that link.)

But since doc­tors have not per­formed a saline abor­tion in the U.S. since 1996, that rais­es the seri­ous ques­tion of how long Fr. Pavone has had that fetus lying around.

I state very firm­ly here that I do not know the answer to that ques­tion, and I am not mak­ing any claims in that regard. But the ques­tion is a seri­ous one and has mer­it. If—I empha­size “if”—Fr. Pavone has had that fetus for over 20 years and keeps it to trot out as a prop from time to time, that’s a very seri­ous mat­ter.

Fr. Pavone’s dio­cese is inves­ti­gat­ing him over this recent event. I should think that Bish­op Zurek would want look into the ques­tion of how old that fetus is.

I hope these ques­tions do not go away.