United States: Catholic Church leader resigns amid moral scandal

An official of the Catholic Church in the United States resigned on Tuesday after allegations surfaced that he had used a gay dating app.

“The United States Catholic Bishops’ Conference is aware of the existence of press reports awaiting publication and suspect that its Secretary-General Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill may have behaved rudely,” the agency said in a statement.

“To avoid this distraction from the activities and work of the Conference, Bishop Burrell resigned immediately,” the agency said, “seriously considering all allegations of misconduct”.

The American Catholic Church, which has been at the center of several major pedophilia scandals in recent years, has stressed that the allegations “have nothing to do with obscene behavior against minors.”

On the same day, Catholic news site The Pillar revealed that Jeffrey Burrell, a member of the Wisconsin (northern state) diocese, used the Grinder gay dating app regularly between 2018 and 2020 and was geolocated near his cell phone. Homosexuals are frequent entities.

Grinder users who claim to be “the largest dating network in the world for gay, bisexual, trans and queer people” create a profile with their partner preferences and are notified when another user is nearby.

Jeffrey Burrell, who was appointed Deputy Secretary-General of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2016 and appointed Secretary-General two years later, was particularly responsible for coordinating the Church’s response to allegations of sexual harassment targeting the American Cardinal. Revealed by Theodore McCarrick, June 2018. The influential retired cardinal was finally fired in 2019.

Although Jeffrey Burrell does not appear to have violated U.S. law, Pillar Editor-in-Chief JD Flynn on Wednesday defended the publication of the article. He asserted that his confession had been obtained through torture, and that his confession had been obtained through torture.

“In recent years, church leaders have recognized that inequalities between the behavior of church leaders and the aspirations of celibacy contribute to a secretive and covert unhealthy and harmful culture,” he defended in a press release.