Outspoken priest provokes war of words

Fr. John Malloy, former pastor of San Francisco’s Sts. Peter and Paul Church, has stirred up a bit of controversy in the San Francisco Chronicle.


In a letter published in the July 7 Chronicle, Malloy addressed the paper’s June 23 article on Fr. Rich Danyluk, who proclaimed his homosexuality to his congregation at St. Joseph’s Basilica in Alameda. The article, wrote Malloy, “and the letters [June 30] you selected to support [Danyluk], show how poorly understood is the teaching of the Catholic Church regarding the gay lifestyle.”

Malloy agreed with Danyluk that the “Gospel is for everyone” and said he himself, the pope, and Cardinal William Levada, “with a multitude of priests, love homosexuals.” Malloy said that Danyluk “certainly knows the difference between sin and sinner. He and we love the sinner, we are also called, after the example of Christ Himself, to hate the sin.”

Would following Christ, asked Malloy, “demand that we accept perverse actions that mimic marital love and end in so many venereal diseases?”