Since the election upon Benedict’s retirement of Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, Leatherby has shunned the new pontiff and continued to only refer to Benedict as the church’s true leader in mass. After several warnings, he was charged with schism, defrocked and excommunicated from the Catholic Church.
“I continue to regard Benedict as retaining the Office of Peter, as mysterious as that might be,” he wrote in an open letter to the Sacramento diocese, referring to the belief that all new Popes replace the original Pope Peter. “Therefore, I do not regard Bergoglio as the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.”
Leatherby’s story is somewhat complicated by allegations of a breach of his vow of celibacy through romantic affairs with at least two adult women, one of whom he publicly confessed his love to in a now rather embarrassing video that has been widely circulated. In it, he begins by addressing an unidentified woman: “Hey, Baby Doll. I love that without mascara that you are still strikingly beautiful,” the priest says into his phone camera as he drives his car at night. “I love that. I love it, like, a lot. A lot a lot. I loved it earlier when I saw you, and you didn’t have it on, and I loved it all night long.”

Justice Bhuyan Calls for Protection of Dissent and Personal Liberty
Supreme Court Justice Ujjal Bhuyan has expressed concern over the growing trend of treating peaceful dissent and ordinary actions as criminal offences. Speaking at a


