TRANSCRIPT
Charleston, South Carolina, has a new bishop — and Catholics are hoping for a change of course. Going back to the late ’50s, some of the dioceses’ former bishops were dismal shepherds and instruments in the liberal infiltration of the Church in America.
Church Militant’s William Mahoney has more on the incoming bishop and some of Charleston’s previous leaders.
Bishop-elect Jacques Fabre: “I thank the Holy Father and also the nuncio for choosing me among better priests.”
Father Jacques Fabre is now bishop-elect of Charleston, according to the Vatican’s announcement on Tuesday. Fabre came to the United States from Haiti as a teenager. His assignments as a priest include serving as a chaplain to Haitian refugees in Guantanamo, Cuba, and for the past 12 years, administering at San Felipe de Jesús mission in Georgia.
Catholics are hopeful about the new appointment, especially since Charleston’s past bishops have been a mixed bag. Fabre’s immediate predecessor, Bp. Robert Guglielmone, moved quickly on the pope’s TLM crackdown.
In November, Guglielmone issued a letter to forbid administering extreme unction and confirmation in the traditional rite, and only permitting baptism in that rite if requested by laity. Guglielmone further forbade TLM for midnight on Christmas, the Triduum and Easter Vigil. He only permitted the Extraordinary Form on weekdays if an additional Novus Ordo Mass is done the same day.
In a lawsuit filed in 2019, Guglielmone was accused of sexually abusing a young boy in New York’s Rockville Centre diocese, where he first began priestly ministry in the late ’70s. Guglielmone denied the allegations.
Guglielmone’s predecessor, Bp. Robert Baker, was evidently a beacon of light.
Baker was one of the few American bishops to call out the root of the problem in the wake of the 2018 Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report.
Bp. Robert Baker: “We are forced today to face the tragic revelation of scores of accusations of predominately homosexual behavior and abuse.”
In 2019, Baker suggested an amendment at a meeting of the U.S. bishops’ conference.
Bp. Baker: “I notice the name ‘Jesus Christ’ hasn’t been mentioned in the course of this. … It might not hurt to throw that in there somewhere.”
In the early ’60s, Charleston had Bp. Frederick Reh, a pupil of notorious cardinal Francis Spellman, who also launched the career of homosexual pederast Theodore McCarrick.
After a few years as Charleston’s bishop, Reh became rector of the scandal-ridden North American College in Rome and then the bishop of Saginaw, Michigan. The diocese collapsed under his rule.
Reh’s predecessor in Charleston was Bp. Paul Hallinan. Hallinan was a decades-long friend of infamous prelate John Dearden. As bishop of Charleston, Hallinan took under his wing a priest named Joseph Bernardin.
In 1966, Dearden asked his friend Hallinan if he had any candidates for pushing the liberal cause in the Church. Hallinan advanced Bernardin, who became one of America’s most destructive prelates. Bernardin’s first crosier, a gift from a Charleston priest, was passed on to Bp. Robert Guglielmone.
Faithful Catholics pray bishop-elect Fabre will discard that squalid crosier.
Church Militant has a Special Report titled “Bernardin: Homosexual Predator Satanist,” which discusses another former Charleston bishop, John Russell. According to one victim, Bp. Russell and Fr. Bernardin sexually assaulted them as part of a satanic ritual in 1957 in the basement of St. Mary’s parish in Greenville.