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Breaking: Pope Ousts Top Vatican Judge Known For Incendiary Anti-Gay Comments

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In one of the more explosive shakeups in the recent history of the Catholic Church, the second-most powerful man in the Vatican has been ousted.

American Cardinal Raymond Burke, a darling of conservative Catholics who is virulently anti-gay, has confirmed to BuzzFeed what rumors from Rome have said for weeks. He will be demoted by Pope Francis from the head of the Roman Catholic Church’s version of the Supreme Court to a figurehead role as the Patron of the Knights of Malta, a chivalrous order known for its work among the sick.

This is not the first demotion for Burke, who was dropped by Francis almost a year ago from an important Vatican bureau that selects bishops around the world. Burke was replaced on The Congregation for Bishops by Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., who, while also conservative, does not use the inflammatory rhetoric that has made Burke a favorite of the far-right in the Catholic Church.

Burke recently told an interviewer that legally-married gay and lesbian family members should be shunned from family celebrations during the upcoming holidays, asking “what would it mean to grandchildren to have present at a family gathering a family member who is living [in] a disordered relationship with another person?”

LOOK: Conservative Leaders Push Catholic Church To Backtrack On Gays

Burke’s strong criticism of a preliminary document that included more inclusive welcoming of LGBT community members in the life of the Church and his challenge to Francis, who is seen to have had a hand in the drafting of the document, were apparently the last straw for the Pope.

Francis recently replaced outspoken Chicago Cardinal Francis George with the more conciliatory Bishop Blase Cupich of Spokane, Washington, a major promotion for the 65-year-old native of Omaha, Nebraska. Admittedly, George was two-and-a-half years beyond the age of 75, when bishops and cardinals submit their resignations to the pope. However, some cardinals have been kept on the job until age 80 when they lose their right to vote in the conclave that selects a new pope after the death or resignation of the reigning pontiff.

These moves are thought by Vatican watchers to be signs that Francis wants to tone down the attacks on communities that are marginalized by the Catholic Church, including LGBT parishioners and divorced and pro-choice Catholics. Burke is a major proponent of the Latin Mass and is known for his fondness of clerical garb that went out of style following the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, which attempted to modernize the Church in worship and its relationship to Jews and to other Christian faiths. Burke opposes those reforms and his move to Rome from St. Louis, where he served as archbishop, was seen as a sign of favor by the ultra-conservative Pope Benedict XVI.

Burke’s influence on the Congregation for Bishops was seen in the naming of several controversial choices in major positions in the American Catholic Church, including Salvatore Cordileone, the Church’s leader in the successful Prop 8 movement that reversed marriage equality in California, from Oakland to San Francisco, an obvious thumb in the eye of the large LGBT community there.

In Chicago, Cupich will take over from George in November. While, for example, Cupich opposes marriage equality, in Spokane he is one of the rare U.S. Church leaders to speak out against attempts “to incite hostility towards homosexual persons or promote an agenda that is hateful and disrespectful of their human dignity.” Cupich wrote in a pastoral letter that was read in all Catholic parishes in the diocese, “It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors wherever it occurs.”

The first major appointment of an American Archbishop tipped Francis’ hand as to how he wanted a change of tone among the hierarchy in the U.S. He named the affable Bishop Bernard Hebda, who had served as head of the diocese of Gaylord, Michigan for only four years, to be co-adjutor bishop with right of succession to the authoritarian and controversial Newark Archbishop John Myers, in 2016 when Myers turns 75.

How long Francis will have to change the leadership of the U.S. Catholic Church remains to be seen, as the vast majority of current ecclesial office-holders were appointed by conservatives John Paul II and Benedict XVI over a 35-year period. In his initial choices, Francis is veering slightly left in tenor. However, it is doubtful that any change in doctrine will be put in place during the remaining years of his pontificate.

 

Image via Wikimedia

 

Related At The New Civil Rights Movement:

Vatican Changes Actual Translation Of Draft That ‘Welcomed’ Gays

More Popular Than Jesus? Pope Francis Just Made The Cover Of Rolling Stone.

American Bishops Thwart Pope Francis’ Attempt To Survey Catholic Public Opinion

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Trump Administration Hit With Lawsuit for Removing Pride Flag

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The Trump administration is facing a lawsuit accusing it of breaking federal law by taking down the LGBTQ+ Pride flag at New York City’s Stonewall National Monument, the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ civil rights movement.

The U.S. Department of the Interior and Secretary Doug Burgum, as well as the National Park Service and Acting Director Jessica Bowron, are named in the lawsuit filed by attorneys for the Gilbert Baker Foundation and others. Gilbert Baker is the artist who created the rainbow Pride flag.

“In the lawsuit,” The New York Times reported, “the Gilbert Baker Foundation argued that the original Pride flag fell under one of the allowed exceptions: to provide historical context at national monuments. This is the exception that allows Confederate flags to be flown at properties managed by the Park Service, including Gettysburg National Military Park.”

READ MORE: ‘Republicans Have to Lose’: Far Right Extremist Leader Puts Trump on Notice

“This was no careless mistake,” the lawsuit reads, according to a screenshot posted by New York Daily News reporter Molly Crane-Newman. “The government has not removed other historical flags at other national monuments, most notably Confederate flags.”

The suit alleges that the “assault on Stonewall is the latest example in a long line of efforts by the Trump Administration to target the LGBTQ+ community for discrimination and opprobrium.”

“In February 2025, for instance, the administration removed the word ‘transgender’ from prominent sections of the Stonewall monument’s website, as part of its wider campaign to demean and erase the transgender community,” it states.

“The Trump Administration has deleted numerous NPS websites discussing LGBTQ+ history,” it continues, “fired at least one federal employee for displaying a pride flag in his office; banned the use of pronouns in email signatures; renamed a John Lewis-class replenishment oiler named after Harvey Milk, a pioneering gay rights leader who served as a Navy officer and one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States.”

READ MORE: ‘Insulting’: Fox News Panel Implodes as Host Clashes With Liberal Guest Over Voter ID

It also cites what it calls “a particularly absurd example,” in which images of the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay — the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb — were flagged for deletion, apparently because the images included the word “Gay.”

The lawsuit alleges a “pattern of systemic targeting of the LGBTQ+ community—combined with the starkly disparate treatment of the Pride flag,” which it claims “demonstrates that the decision to alter the Stonewall monument was not just a mistake. It was based on an impermissible animus.”

Numerous New York elected leaders at all levels, including U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, denounced the administration’s removal of the flag.

The removal became a national flashpoint, drawing hundreds of locals to protest and prompting elected leaders to vow to raise it again.

Activists and officials gathered for multiple demonstrations at the Stonewall National Monument, where they raised a new Pride flag — an act that the Trump administration condemned as a “political stunt.”

READ MORE: Massie Warns of Growing GOP ‘Defections’

 

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Massie Warns of Growing GOP ‘Defections’

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A prominent House Republican who successfully advanced bipartisan legislation to release the Epstein files is predicting there will be more GOP “defections” once the primaries are over.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) told Politico that because Speaker Mike Johnson’s majority is so thin, “on any given day, I would just need one or two of my own co-conspirators to get something done” that goes against the Trump administration’s agenda.

He said that “what’s happening is that the retirement caucus is growing and primary days are coming up and passing. Once we get past March, April and May, which contain a large portion of their Republican primaries, I think you’re going to see more defections.”

Massie added that “quietly and privately, people are telling me they agree with me.”

In a surprising revelation, Massie said that House Republicans “are being told every week to stand down, bite their tongue, sit on their hands, do what they’re told, be part of the team and put their brain in neutral.”

READ MORE: ‘Insulting’: Fox News Panel Implodes as Host Clashes With Liberal Guest Over Voter ID

Massie also offered several other pointed remarks.

He noted that after President Trump called him a “moron” at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this month, pastors were “not impressed and I don’t think anybody was impressed by his performance at the prayer breakfast. It was completely political.”

The Kentucky Republican further directed strong criticism toward Attorney General Pam Bondi after being the only member of his party to, as Politico reported, “spar” with her at last week’s contentious congressional hearing.

“When the attorney general is reduced to a stack of pre-prepared insults to deliver, and when the DOJ is responding to my every tweet with additional unredactions, I don’t think I’m going to change what I’m doing just yet,” he said.

Massie described Bondi as looking “weak and frustrated” at the hearing “when she started talking about the Dow Jones, which has literally nothing to do with her job.”

“I thought that looked bad,” he said. He also pointed to her “stack of insults that were pre-prepared — in politics you might call it oppo research — and you could see her shuffling through them to try and find which one matched the person who was trying to ask her a question at the time. She found my card like right at the end, as you can see she was looking for it.”

READ MORE: ‘Republicans Have to Lose’: Far Right Extremist Leader Puts Trump on Notice

 

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‘Republicans Have to Lose’: Far Right Extremist Leader Puts Trump on Notice

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Far-right extremist leader Nick Fuentes — who brands himself “America First” — once again is putting President Donald Trump and the GOP on notice, saying that Republicans are “gonna get destroyed” in the 2026 midterms and by 2028 it will be “Democrats on steroids.”

“We are headed for an utter and total defeat in the midterms,” Fuentes predicted on his Rumble streaming show on Monday, urging his supporters to not vote in November. Fuentes has 1.2 million followers on the X social media platform.

He said that “the Democrats will take the House, and then it is impeachment City. We are taking a trip to impeachment City.”

Democrats, Fuentes declared, will win the House and the Senate, and “then it’s impeachments, subpoenas, depositions, investigations. Trump might even be removed from office.”

“When all is said and done, he might even be pulled by his own people. That — there is a non-zero chance. As a matter of fact, there’s a good chance that’s gonna happen.”

READ MORE: Rogan on Epstein Files: ‘Looks Terrible’ for Trump

“Trump is getting impeached,” Fuentes continued. “Vance is getting impeached. Hegseth is — they’re all getting impeached. They’re all being subpoenaed. They’re all being deposed.”

“I warned you,” Fuentes said. “I told you, this is what was gonna happen.”

“My message in ’26, you could take it or leave it. Don’t vote. Don’t vote, do not vote in the midterms. The Republicans have to lose. They have to lose. They have to crash and burn. A cleansing fire is the only thing that will save us. It cannot be fixed.”

“F — — Trump, f — — MAGA, f — —  all this stuff. It can’t be fixed. If it could have been fixed, it would have been fixed in 2025, but it wasn’t.”

“They made every mistake. Liberation Day: disaster. DOGE: disaster. Big, beautiful bill: disaster. Epstein files: disaster. Iran: disaster.

“The personnel — Mike Waltz: disaster. Ratcliffe: disaster, Rubio: disaster. Pam Bondi: disaster — all self-inflicted. Trump personnel, Trump policy, Trump strategy, Trump playbook — we tried it your way, it didn’t work.”

“Now we don’t vote. That’s the message. Seriously. Can’t blame anybody else. Bad advice, bad advisors, Biden’s economy. Enough already. It didn’t work. We’re not voting. I’m staying home, and you know what? I hope the Democrats impeach him. I hope the Democrats impeach all of them. I hope they indict everybody. I hope they depose and compel the release of documents, and I hope they find all the criminal behavior, and I hope it destroys the GOP. I hope it creates a crisis for the GOP so severe that they never recover.”

READ MORE: Trump Mocked for ‘Unhinged Tantrum’ as ‘Trump Station’ Story Shifts Again

Fuentes predicted that “in two years, this is gonna be the most unpopular administration in history. It’s gonna be a repeat of 2020. That’s what we’re looking at here.”

“Think about where Trump is — lowest approval rating of any modern president. Trump’s approval is lower at this point in his presidency, lower than Biden at this point, lower than Trump was at this point. Lowest that it’s been in the second term.”

He also lamented the lack of results he and his “America First” followers wanted.

“He’s completely underwater with the under 40 crowd, and it’s only gonna get worse, especially because Trump is not delivering on these things. No mass deportations, economy’s not getting better. Housing prices have literally never been more unaffordable. The wars are escalating, actually, as opposed to getting better. And now, we seriously have to contend with the possibility that in 2028, we get Democrats on steroids. We get Democrats with a vengeance.”

Fuentes has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “white nationalist,” an “admirer of fascists,” and someone who “frequently relies on antisemitic tropes.”

According to the Anti-Defamation League, “Fuentes has used his platforms to make numerous antisemitic, racist, homophobic and misogynistic comments,” and spreads “white supremacist propaganda.”

READ MORE: How Trump Used Jesse Jackson’s Death to Argue He’s Not a Racist

 

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