Father Frank Pavone told Newsmax Monday that the Vatican’s move to defrock him isn’t about “anything I did or didn’t do.” The fervently anti-abortion head of Priests for Life said it’s instead about control.
“This is about the control that the bishops want to exercise over the pro-life movement and messaging to Catholics because Priests for Life since 1993, under my leadership, has had a profound impact on the Catholic population when it comes to pro-life,” Pavone said during an appearance on Newsmax’s “The Chris Salcedo Show.” “They saw that after I had been doing it about seven or eight years, so at first they tried to say, ‘You have to go back and do parish work.’ Well, that didn't work because I even appealed to the Vatican and I said, ‘Look, this is my vocation. Why shouldn't a priest be allowed to defend the unborn full-time?’”
“So, the second thing they tried to do is discredit the ministry itself,” he continued. “They raised, again, very vague concerns about a decade ago about our finances. Well we sent them clean audits. The Vatican looked at our finances, they said, ‘Everything is in order.’”
“So they figured well, if we can't take Father Frank out of Priests for Life, and we can't take Priests for Life away from Father Frank, maybe we've got to take the father away from Frank,” he added.
Pavone also said that “some bishops” were opposed to his efforts to elect pro-life candidates and his unabashed support of former President Donald Trump.
“They also think that I'm too aggressive on abortion,” he said. “Meanwhile we lead the biggest healing ministry in the world for those who have had abortions.”
When asked about the Vatican’s claim that Pavone had been given “ample opportunity” to defend himself prior to being laicized, he said, “We've taken every opportunity to defend ourselves, not only in this recent case, but for the last 21 years I have been.”
“They have not been fair, however, they have not been transparent with this process at all,” he continued. “It's been a one-sided narrative. They’ve wanted to do this for many years and I've been subject to lies told about me, decisions made one day and then exactly the opposite a week later.”
The director of Priests for Life said that whatever is behind the Vatican’s decision to defrock him is not going to keep him from living out his calling.
“We're going to continue our good pro-life work, our supporters are going to keep supporting us because they're supporting us because we're doing the work that some of the bishops should be doing, but they're not,” he said.
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