LEAD STORY
using technology to track priests Questions: is it a legitimate tool to root out moral corruption? could it encourage blackmail? n BY ROBERT MOYNIHAN, ITV EDITOR Two American journalists — J.D. Flynn and Ed Condon (photos below), who have founded a news agency called The Pillar — have warned the Vatican that governments (perhaps that of China) might obtain compromising information about Vatican officials which could potentially lead to blackmail. The case exploded when the two journalists revealed their concerns to the world. Opposite, Chinese bishops at the October 2018 Synod of Bishops (CNS photo / Alessandro Di Meo, EPA)
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his story sets before us allegations about the sexual activities of a priest, first reported July 20 by a relatively new Catholic news agency, The Pillar, founded earlier this year by two former editors at Catholic News Agency (owned by EWTN), JD Flynn and Ed Condon, from which both resigned at the very end of 2020. A sad enough story, but not the first time such a story has been told. We live in a fallen world, and we know the devil prowls about, seeking the ruin of souls. The Church seeks to save those souls, wrenching them back out of the devil’s grasp through the grace of God. The priest in question abruptly resigned his post with the US bishops’ conference. So with that decision the story took on a certain seriousness. REMOTE TRACKING Then emerged something new: the
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INSIDE THE VATICAN SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2021
way the evidence in this case had been gathered. The evidence of the alleged sexual activity had been gathered — the news agency itself revealed — by remote tracking of the priest’s phone. In other words, everywhere the priest went with his phone, reports of his location were being sent in to a central database, and a way to access that database had been made available to the news agency, The Pillar. The news agency concluded that the priest had been in places where various liaisons of a sexual nature were quite “likely” to have occurred. No evidence of an actual occurrence has been produced. So the priest in this case had no privacy. The record of his movements was an open book. Well, an open book to those who have access to the database… But who has access to such a database?
TECHNOLOGY OFFERED TO OTHERS EARLIER Then, remarkably, the editors of another Catholic news agency (named Catholic News Agency, CNA) published their own startling report about The Pillar’s report, revealing that they themselves had been offered this very same location-tracking program three years ago, in 2018 — and had refused to use the program to track the movements of priests. “The issue was first raised in 2018, when a person concerned with reforming the Catholic clergy approached some Church individuals and organizations, including Catholic News Agency,” CNA reported. “A Catholic tech expert who also spoke to CNA said the technology is so precise that it can provide the names and addresses of the targeted clergy and also tell what other app users he might spend time with and where their meetings take place,” CNA said.
