Bishop Zurek: Fr. Pavone may have exhumed baby from pro-Trump video.

In Novem­ber 2016, then-Fr. Frank Pavone took the body of an abort­ed child, put it on an altar, and filmed a cam­paign com­mer­cial for Don­ald Trump. Six years lat­er, Pope Fran­cis defrocked him.

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mar­il­lo bish­op Patrick Zurek makes the charge about exhuma­tion in a let­ter to Pavone dat­ed May 5, 2017. The pur­pose of the let­ter was to demand that Pavone ask to be lai­cized. If Pavone did not request it him­self, Bish­op Zurek would ask Pope Fran­cis to lai­cize him invol­un­tar­i­ly. In the let­ter, Zurek cites two grounds for this course of action: (1) Pavone’s “incor­ri­gi­ble” dis­obe­di­ence; (2) Pavone’s exploita­tion of a dead baby for par­ti­san polit­i­cal pur­pos­es. In the mid­dle of all that, Zurek includes this extra­or­di­nary para­graph:

First, regard­ing the exploita­tion of that abort­ed baby. At the begin­ning of the memo­r­i­al video you clear­ly stat­ed that this child had been laid to rest and that you per­formed its funer­al, and at the end of the video you stat­ed that you will now lay the child to rest again. [Again? So the child had been already been buried before?] Even though your canon­ist stat­ed that you made a mis­take and miss-spoke [sic], I have no pos­i­tive and prob­a­ble cause to believe your canon­ist’s state­ment “that his [Fr. Frank’s] actions did not relate to exhum­ing or reusing an abort­ed corpse for the sin­gu­lar pur­pose of using media for a polit­i­cal mes­sage.” In the sec­ond “apol­o­gy” video you stat­ed [that] plac­ing the abort­ed baby on the altar was not “out of bounds.” You stat­ed: “We are not in an ordi­nary moment.” … You seem to be say­ing that des­per­ate times call for des­per­ate mea­sures, even to the extent of exhum­ing an abort­ed baby.

Exhum­ing. An. Abort­ed. Baby.

Exhum­ing. This isn’t what pro-life peo­ple do. This is what mon­sters do.

Isn’t there some sort of law—I don’t mean canon law, I mean reg­u­lar civ­il law—that would pro­hib­it a per­son from tak­ing it upon him­self to exhume a corpse in order to get some­one elect­ed to the pres­i­den­cy? Should the police be mak­ing a call on Mr. Pavone?

Zurek does­n’t men­tion civ­il law, which is unfor­tu­nate, but he does men­tion the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church §2300:

The bod­ies of the dead must be treat­ed with respect and char­i­ty, in faith and hope of the Res­ur­rec­tion. The bur­ial of the dead is a cor­po­ral work of mer­cy; it hon­ors the chil­dren of God, who are tem­ples of the Holy Spir­it.

Zurek con­tin­ued, in a harsh con­dem­na­tion of Mr. Pavone:

You did not treat that abort­ed baby with respect and char­i­ty; you have not hon­ored that child of God who could have been a tem­ple of the Holy Spir­it. Instead, you exploit­ed that poor child, and have giv­en rise to great and grave inter­na­tion­al scan­dal. I con­clude that you know­ing­ly and delib­er­ate­ly exploit­ed that child for max­i­mum “shock effect” in order to fur­ther your own per­son­al polit­i­cal agen­da.

I had already not­ed, on this wery blog, on Novem­ber 14, 2016, that Pavone was incon­sis­tent when he tried to account for where he got the dead body and what he did with it after his pro­pa­gan­da film. I had also not­ed, three days ear­li­er, that many peo­ple had seri­ous ques­tions about how long it may have been sit­ting around the offices of Priests for Life.

Oh! Fr. Pavone said to his bish­op, when called to Amar­il­lo to account for such things. I buried that child! Then I need­ed it for a video. Then I buried it again!

What do you mean “again,” Frank?

Oh! Pavone’s canon­ist inter­ject­ed. Pavone mis­spoke!

I’ll just bet he mis­spoke. Pavone did­n’t mean to let that part slip. Oops.

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What Zurek’s let­ter reveals is just how cen­tral Pavone’s exploita­tion of an abort­ed baby was in the Vat­i­can’s deci­sion to defrock him. The let­ter is three pages long, and two of those pages con­demn Pavone’s treat­ment of that baby in the harsh­est terms. Zurek cites three arti­cles of Canon Law against him. He cites Canon 1235 to instruct Pavone that the altar on which he placed the dead baby was just that: an altar. He cites Canon 1211 to instruct Pavone that mis­us­ing an altar is “a scan­dal to the faith­ful.” And he cites Canon 287 to instruct Pavone that priests are not to be involved in par­ti­san pol­i­tics. And just lis­ten to the lan­guage:

In your sup­posed apol­o­gy video you seem to be apolo­getic in the first half but then in the sec­ond half you begin a tirade against your ene­mies (all who dis­agree with you) and make threats against them. You even go so far as to say you will not be lec­tured by any­one in the Church or out­side the Church about how to respect an unborn child.

Your par­ti­san rhetoric in favor of one polit­i­cal can­di­date and par­ty, which is a vio­la­tion of canon 287 … has led you to call­ing all those who dis­agree with you your ene­mies. These sup­posed ene­mies of yours, that you have judged and threat­ened, are the peo­ple of God who need your prayers.

On the final page, Zurek turns to Pavone’s “con­tin­u­al dis­obe­di­ence.” As ear­ly as 2014, Zurek had ordered Pavone to cease all broad­cast­ing in the media. On Decem­ber 6, 2016—one month after Pavone filmed the pro­pa­gan­da com­mer­cial for Trump—Zurek wrote to him: “I remind you that you do not have fac­ul­ties at this time.” He also instruct­ed him to refrain from wear­ing cler­i­cal garb.

All of which instruc­tions Pavone ignored. He also dis­obeyed an instruc­tion from his bish­op not to cel­e­brate a funer­al Mass for Nor­ma McCor­vey. (She was the “Roe” in Roe v. Wade, who lat­er became pro-life.)

“Frank,” Bish­op Zurek wrote, after recall­ing these details,

you are incor­ri­gi­ble. You have no respect for me, my office, my author­i­ty, my over­sight. You have had no respect for Car­di­nal Dolan, nor the direc­tives man­dat­ed by the Con­gre­ga­tion for the Cler­gy. I have been deal­ing with your dis­obe­di­ence and scan­dalous behav­ior for years. There is noth­ing more I can do with you.

In good con­science, I will not even con­sid­er allow­ing you to excar­di­nate to anoth­er dio­cese. You would just con­tin­ue to be dis­obe­di­ent and act scan­dalous­ly.

That last part is sig­nif­i­cant, because it reveals that Pavone was lying when he insist­ed that he had been trans­fered to a “new and sup­port­ive bish­op.”

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When I wrote about Pavone’s exploita­tion of that poor child [graph­ic image warn­ing] and demand­ed that his fac­ul­ty to say Mass be sus­pend­ed, I did not think it would get much trac­tion. I thought I might get a cou­ple hun­dred read­ers, they’d be upset, and noth­ing would hap­pen.

As it turned out, the Wash­ing­ton Post picked up on it. They quot­ed me, as well as my friend Mary Pez­zu­lo. My arti­cle call­ing for Pavone’s sus­pen­sion end­ed up with more than 35,000 page views.

On our blogs, in the years that fol­lowed, Mary and I con­tin­ued to ham­mer Pavone’s scan­dalous and par­ti­san behav­ior. But, it seemed, the dio­cese of Amar­il­lo was silent. I lost some faith in the Church’s min­is­ters because of that.

Now I know they were not silent. Pavone’s exploita­tion of a dead baby, for polit­i­cal gain, in addi­tion to his “incor­ri­gi­ble” dis­obe­di­ence, were at the heart of Amar­il­lo’s request that Pope Fran­cis defrock him. And they start­ed this process as ear­ly as six months after the pro­pa­gan­da video.

Know­ing that has restored some of my faith.

I lost my only child. She was still­born. I held my dead daugh­ter in my arms. The idea that a priest would exploit the body of a dead child was and remains intol­er­a­ble to me. You treat the dead with respect. That is why I nev­er let this sto­ry go and nev­er let Pavone out of my radar.

Even now, Pavone is (false­ly) insist­ing that he’s “obe­di­ent,” and he is using his defrock­ing as an excuse to grift for dona­tions. “Donate!” the Priests for Life Web site tells its vis­i­tors. “He is being obe­di­ent, but they’re attack­ing him in order to silence you.”

And on Twit­ter, Pavone makes clear that the priest­hood was noth­ing more than a “title” and a cos­tume to him:

What title I have and what clothes I wear are a very small price to pay for open­ing my mouth about Biden, Pelosi, the Democ­rats, and the holo­caust of #abor­tion while many of the same church lead­ers cow­er in silence.

He thinks no more of the priest­hood than he does of human life. It’s a means to an end for him. No one who is pro-life would exploit a dead body for polit­i­cal gain. They would­n’t keep it on hand; they would­n’t bury it, dig it up in the heat of a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, then rebury it. No priest who hon­ors his voca­tion, who knows what it means to be a min­ster of the mer­cy of Jesus Christ, would reduce the priest­hood to a “title” and “clothes” that are a “small price to pay” to retain his polit­i­cal com­mit­ments. Pavone has con­tempt for the priest­hood, just as he has con­tempt for human life and con­tempt for the Church and, ulti­mate­ly, con­tempt for Jesus Christ.

Pavone con­tin­ues to con­demn and defy the author­i­ty of the Church that defrocked him, whing­ing about the Vat­i­can’s sup­posed “abuse of author­i­ty” and describ­ing Bish­op Zurek as an “offen­sive” “liar” hav­ing a “tantrum.” He con­tin­ues to enlist his fol­low­ers in his per­son­al war against Church author­i­ty. He thinks he’s doing so “for the babies”; he’s real­ly doing it for his own ego. I’m afraid the next step might be his excom­mu­ni­ca­tion.

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Update. My friend Mary Pez­zu­lo also writes about Bish­op Zurek’s 2017 let­ter here.