Priest Holes

A Chicago priest must hide from Cardinal Cupich?

During the persecution of Catholics in Elizabethan England, Jesuit priests pretending to be family relatives or tutors hid in specially constructed ‘priest holes’ to avoid royal prosecutors. Surprise inspections and raids of family homes were not uncommon and if a priest was found, he would face torture and execution.

Today, Catholic churchmen are enemies to one another. Vice rages against virtue, as corrupt members of the hierarchy persecute the unsullied clergy. Everyone knows stories of good priests sent to the hinterlands of his diocese, or of priests who retire early, tightlipped lest their meager pensions be reduced or stopped.

A priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago recently went into hiding after Cardinal Cupich sent two chancery priests to hasten him off to psychiatric treatment. Fr. Kalchik, together with some parishioners, had burned a rainbow banner that hung over the altar when the late Fr. Daniel Montalbano, an active homosexual, was the pastor. Will there be no mercy for Kalchik?

 

 

Richard M. DellOrfano spent ten years on a cross-country pilgrimage following Christ’s instruction to minister without possessions. He is completing his autobiography: Path Perilous, My Search for God and the Miraculous.

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