(FiveNation.com)- Frank Pavone, a controversial Catholic priest and political activist who has been laicized from the clerical state by the Catholic Church, said that he is engaged in a battle “for the soul of the Catholic Church.” (The Battle for the Soul of the Nation was a Joe Biden speech delivered on September 1, 2022.)
Pavone is the national director of the well-known pro-life organization Priests for Life.
He added that the central issue is the abortion debate.
Pavone, whose organization has its headquarters in Titusville, Florida, also claimed that some bishops in the Church purposefully soften their pro-life message because they don’t want to “offend” influential Democrats and members of Congress.
According to a Vatican statement, Pavone was laicized on Nov. 9 for his “blasphemous communications on social media and persistent disobedience of lawful instructions from his diocesan bishop.” On Dec. 13, the Catholic bishops of the United States were informed of this.
According to the Catholic website Pillarcatholic.com, since 2016, “Pavone has posted tweets, Facebook statuses, videos, and other social media postings urging support for the Republican Party, questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, and disparaging Democratic lawmakers.”
According to the same website, Pavone participated in the Catholics for Trump campaign advisory group during the 2020 election.
Pavone said the Church hierarchy got upset by a comment he made to someone who was arguing with him on Twitter, a Biden supporter.
He said it was in the middle of the national frustration and anger of the 2020 election.
“I should not have and never would have used the word ‘g**damn’ in a tweet.”
Pavone, ordained in New York in 1988, claimed that the tweet also referred to Biden as a “loser.”
Regarding his tweet, he admitted, “I did the wrong thing. I made a mistake, but that’s how things are in this world. We become irate.”
Pavone claimed that the Church’s stance changed to:
Fr. Frank has taught a heresy. God does not damn people, and he has put Biden and the Democrats in the category that they are to be damned and go to hell. This is not right for a priest to be teaching this.”
According to Pavone, the conflict between Pavone and some of the Church’s bishops has been rooted in politics for many years. This includes both external politics and internal church politics.
He asserted that people’s freedom to express themselves however they choose is a fundamental human right.
