Church officials are uneasy in the wake of a series of articles published by a Catholic news blog that claim cellphone data shows priests, ranging from suburban New Jersey to even within the Vatican City’s ancient walls, are using gay hookup app Grindr, according to the New York Times.
Worshippers attend the Pope’s Easter Sunday mass outside St Peter’s Basilica in 2019.
KEY FACTS
The Pillar, a conservative Catholic news blog, claimed that an analysis of cell phone data showed Catholic priests using Grindr, despite taking strict vows of celibacy when they enter the priesthood and the Church’s stance that homosexuality is a sin.
The Pillar has released only sparse information about the source of its data.
Catholic officials told the Times they were worried about priests possibly using Grindr — but also about the apparent attack on priests’ privacy.
The reports have already led to the resignation of Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, who stepped down from his position as general secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops last month after The Pillar alleged his cell phone data showed he used Grindr and patronized gay bars.
The blog has also accused unnamed individuals of using Grindr within the Archdiocese of Newark, which has a history of its priests being accused of sexual misconduct, including former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was charged just weeks ago with sexually assaulting a teenager in 1974.
A third report from The Pillar last month alleged dozens of cell phones had pinged with signals from dating apps in 2018 from restricted areas of Rome’s Vatican City, home to the Vatican and the pope.
TANGENT
Questions still remain regarding how The Pillar came by the priests’ cell phone data, and if they were assisted by an outside source with an ulterior motive. The Pillar says it obtained the information from a data vendor and had it authenticated by an outside consulting firm, but has offered no additional details. Another conservative religion outlet, the Catholic News Agency, said it had been offered cell phone data by a source “concerned with reforming the Catholic clergy,” that the agency’s executive editor Alejandro Bermudez ultimately decided to decline because he believed the information had been gathered by “sketchy” means, he told the New York Times. The source came forward to the Catholic News Agency in 2018, when The Pillar editors J.D. Flynn and Ed Condon were working at the agency, but Bermudez told the newspaper he did not inform them of the tip he’d received. Grindr itself released a statement last month in response to The Pillar’s series of reports, saying the bloggers “brazenly” crossed a number of “ethical, moral, and legal lines” and likened the investigation to a witch hunt. Grindr is still completing a probe into how The Pillar accessed the data, the app said, but noted they don’t think it was from Grindr itself and that the review is focusing on possible links to network providers, location data brokers and ad networks. “What is clear is that this work involved much more than just a small blog,” Grindr said in a statement. Grindr has come under fire in recent years for selling user data, and was fined over $11 million earlier this year by Norway under European privacy law for disclosing user information to advertisers, including personal details like sexual orientation and location. The fine equals 10% of Grindr’s annual revenue. In 2018, Grindr admitted it had shared users’ HIV status paired with information like location, email and phone details to two outside analytical companies, a practice it discontinued.
KEY BACKGROUND
The Catholic Church is still steadfast in its teachings that priests must be celibate and that homosexuality is unacceptable, though Church leader Pope Francis has made comments indicating he is more progressive than many of his predecessors. In 2016, he gave priests the authority to forgive people who have abortions and has endorsed legal protections for same-sex couples, though he has stopped short of lending his support to same-sex marriages.
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