Chicago Priest Who Burned Gay Flag 'In Hiding' After Ousting

CHICAGO, IL — A Chicago priest forced out of his church for publicly burning and exorcising a Christian and gay pride flag claimed he has been in hiding since the ousting in his first interview since the incident. The interview, entitled “A Priest in Hiding,” was an exclusive on the conservative Catholic website Church Militant.

Rev. Paul Kalchik was forced from Resurrection Parish by Cardinal Blase Cupich. When Kalchik said in a church newsletter he would be burning the flag, which had a decades-long history as a part of the church, Cupich, who has joined Pope Francis in making the Catholic Church more accepting of gay people, intervened.

Kalchik was told he “could not move forward with that planned activity,” by Cupich’s decree, according to the Archdiocese of Chicago spokeswoman Anne Maselli.

The priest claimed in his interview with Church Militant that he hadn’t been told not to burn the flag. Cupich “doesn’t operate in a written format,” he said.

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“He didn’t say don’t—I don’t—again, I never got that message. Cardinal Cupich doesn’t operate in a written format,” he said. “Nobody said not to destroy it. They said simply ‘that ceremony you’re having…where you’re going to burn, blah blah blah,’ you know, ‘don’t have that ceremony.’ So, again, they didn’t tell me not to destroy it,” the priest said.

“Why did you burn it? That’s just a fitting end to it, right?” the interviewer asked Kalchik.

“Stuff like that that makes a mockery of the practice of the faith have [sic] to be destroyed, settled the right way… evil needs to be dealt with” the priest responded.

Following the public burning, Alderman Deb Mell, who is gay, led a protest at the church. Later, on Sept. 19, she officially called for his ousting. “I’m calling on Pope Francis and Cardinal Cupich to send this hateful bigot packing … This is a hate crime-plain and simple,” she said on Sept. 19.

Two days later, Kalchik was out. Anne Maselli, spokesperson for the archdiocese, said “this has been in the works for some time and is not directly due to the flag burning.”

See more: Church Should Ax ‘Hateful Bigot’ Priest: Chicago Official

“For some weeks now, I have become increasingly concerned about a number of issues at Resurrection Parish,” Cupich said in a letter to the church community. “It has become clear to me that Fr. Kalchik must take time away from the parish to receive pastoral support so his needs can be assessed.”

A Priest in Hiding”

Kalchik claims that on Sept. 22, the day after his ousting, he went into hiding. Church Militant said Cupich made “threats” through two vicars, Msgr. Dennis Lyle and Fr. Jeremy Thomas, calling it an example of “Chicago thuggery.”

They would have police arrest him “in order to commit him to St. Luke Institute,” the publication said. St. Luke’s Institute in Maryland is a priest-focused psychiatric center.

Kalchik said in the interview he didn’t know how such forcible arrest would turn out because he had “volunteer policemen there to make certain I wouldn’t be tarred and feathered by the rabid homosexualists of the North Side of Chicago.”

He also said he received death threats.


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