PEDOPHILE PRIESTS ARE STRAIGHT
Catholic nonprofit in Colorado spent millions for data from hookup apps to identify gay priests: report


Muri Assunção, New York Daily News
Thu, March 9, 2023 at 12:20 PM MST·2 min read

A Denver-based Catholic nonprofit spent millions of dollars to purchase tracking data from gay dating and hookup apps to identify gay priests. They then shared that information with bishops across the country, a new investigation has found.

Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal — a group whose goal is to “empower the church to carry out its mission” by providing church leaders with “evidence-based resources” so they can better train priests after identifying their weaknesses — obtained tracking data from popular dating and hookup apps from 2018 through 2021, according to an investigative report published Thursday by The Washington Post.

The data allegedly purchased by the group involved users of Grindr, Scruff, Growlr and Jack’d — apps that are primarily used by gay and bisexual men — as well as OkCupid, according to the report.

Two people familiar with the matter told the paper they disapprove of the secretive effort, which they view as spying, adding that the project would ultimately damage the image of the Catholic Church.

The group claims to have purchased location and usage data from the apps, then cross-referenced that information with known addresses of priests, according to the report.

Grindr, the world’s largest LGBTQ social network, says such claims “remain completely invalidated.”

The company says it takes the privacy and safety of its roughly 12 million monthly active users “very seriously” and never shares users’ personal information, such as geolocation, profile or even “industry-standard data like age or gender.”

“We are infuriated by the actions of these anti-LGBTQ vigilantes,” Grindr spokesperson Patrick Lenihan told the Daily News on Thursday. “Grindr has and will continue to push the industry to keep bad actors out of the ad tech ecosystem, particularly on behalf of the LGBTQ community. All that group is doing is hurting people.”

Prior to the publishing of the report, The Washington Post reached out to the Catholic organization for comment. A spokesperson said the group’s president, Jayd Henricks, would agree to do an interview at a later time — but he later failed to return any phone calls or messages from the reporters.

On Wednesday, Henricks said in a first-person piece published online that the organization has “used data to identify models of parish and diocesan life that flourish, as well as those that were less successful.”

The essay, titled “Working for Church Renewal,” appeared on the site First Things, a journal of religion and public life published by a nonprofit named The Institute on Religion and Public Life.