San Diego gay Catholic Church employee resigns following threats, vandalism and harassment
Aaron Bianco alleges right-wing Catholic groups have repeatedly harassed him and demanded his firing
An openly gay employee of a Catholic Church in San Diego has submitted his resignation after being subjected to threats, vandalism, and a continued campaign of online and in-person harassment directed at him and members of his family.
Aaron Bianco, who worked as a pastoral associate for St. John the Evangelist Parish in the city’s gay-friendly Hillcrest neighborhood, notified parishioners of his decision to resign at the end of the month during Sunday Mass.
Bianco’s emotional address was greeted with applause from the packed church, reports FOX 5 San Diego.
“For about the last year and a half, we have been building a ministry to those in the LGBT community, to make them feel welcome here at St. John’s, and there are those who do not like that,” Bianco told FOX 5 after addressing the congregation. “They have rained hate for almost two years and it has gotten much worse in the last two months.”
Bianco told the National Catholic Reporter that he had endured “physical and emotional violence from groups like Church Militant and LifeSiteNews for the past year and a half.”
He said that harassment took the form of slashed tires, death threats, attacks outside Mass, and “hundreds of letters, phone calls and emails.”
That harassment continued with an incident where vandals broke into St. John’s rectory on the evening of Oct. 14 and spray-painted the message “No Fags” on the conference room wall.
The “final straw,” as he put it was an online posting by the right-wing Lepanto Institute on Oct. 17, in which the author of the piece posted a picture of his family, including his now-deceased mother, and linked to an entry in the White Pages revealing where Bianco and his husband live.
The post was later cross-posted to right-wing website LifeSiteNews.
In the piece, the Lepanto Institute criticized Bishop Robert W. McElroy for defending Bianco’s position within the church. McElroy has previously been the target of criticism from right-wing Catholics and evangelicals for reaching out to LGBTQ-identifying Catholics.
Both the Lepanto Institute and LifeSiteNews cited a 2015 Wall Street Journal article in which McElroy said Bianco could remain in charge of Catholic education programs at St. John’s.
In that article, Bianco said McElroy “let me know that [being gay] should not hinder me from participating fully in the life of the church.”
The Lepanto Institute also launched a petition asking McElroy to fire Bianco.
McElroy, who is in the midst of holding eight “listening sessions” throughout the diocese about the church sexual abuse crisis, has also been forced to field questions about a homosexual employee in a same-sex marriage at each of the seven listening sessions held so far — indicating, perhaps, some level of coordination. At nearly every meeting, security personnel have had to escort someone from the room for disruptive behavior.
At the most recent session, held at St. Gabriel Parish in Poway, Calif., on Oct. 18, McElroy was booed after defending his decision not to fire Bianco.
“If the church eliminated all the employees who are not living out the teachings of the church in its fullness, we would be employing only angels,” McElroy said.
Bianco officially submitted his resignation later that day.
Both the FBI and the San Diego Police Department are investigating the break-in and vandalism in the parish office, which McElroy has condemned as “vile and reprehensible.”
Bianco also told the Reporter in an email that officers had given him a form for a concealed weapon permit, which he completed and filed with the police department.
In an email to the Reporter, the Lepanto Institute defended its actions calling for Bianco’s firing.
“Someone who is in a same-sex ‘marriage’ has no more business working in leadership roles in the Catholic Church than does a satanist,” a spokesman for the Institute wrote. “Let’s be clear, same-sex ‘marriage’ is a satanic mockery of the sacrament of Holy Matrimony, and those engaged in such abominable behavior should never have been hired to begin with.”
Bianco, who was criticized in the right-wing blogosphere for his ties to Call to Action, a progressive organization pushing for changes within the Catholic Church, has vowed to not allow conservative activists to push him out of the Church.
“These groups have proven they cannot disagree with me in a respectful way,” Bianco wrote in an email to colleagues announcing his resignation. “That being said, I will not back down from confronting such evil in our Church. I intend to work on a larger scale to make sure groups like this do not make their way into the lives of everyday Catholics.”
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