Gay Today | Gay News, current events, entertainment, stories and features

Pope's Handyman Arrested by Miami Plainclothes Police

Heads Miami's Jubilee 2000 Outreach to Lapsed Catholics

Former University President Led Pilgrims to Pope in Cuba

By Jack Nichols

The Rev. Patrick H. O'Neill

Miami, Florida�At the time of Pope John Paul II's vicious attack last week on the integrity and validity of same-sex love and affection, one of his most prominent supporters, the Rev. Patrick H. O'Neill, a former President of St. Thomas University, and the Roman Catholic cleric who oversees South Florida's appeals to lapsed Catholics, was arrested by a policeman posing as a male prostitute.

The lurid details of the arrest and the unnecessary printing of Father O'Neill's home address in The Miami Herald, have emerged from both that newspaper and from a gaggle of jokes and rumors that have spread quickly through South Florida's gay communities.

Father O'Neill is executive director of the Archdiocese of Miami's Jubilee 2000 program, The Miami Herald calls Jubilee 2000 the archdiocese's "most-ambitious evangelization effort since Pope John Paul II's 1987 visit�to bring more of South Florida's 1.3 million Catholics 'home' to the church.' "

Miami's veteran gay activist, Bob Kunst, sees Father O'Neill's highly publicized predicament as "a clear proof of the existence of The Unholy Trinity, namely the Pope, the Police and the Paper�the PPP" Kunst also says that "it's the Big P that occupies the minds and energies of each member of this Unholy Trinity and that this Big P is," he contends, " Penis."

"I doubt that the Pope--when he called homosexual behavior evil-- could have been referring to someone like Father O'Neill," said Kunst slyly. "But what blows me away, is the amount that that priest supposedly offered the plainclothesman, one-hundred smackeroos." Kunst chortled: "Hell, I wish he'd offered that hundred to me. And he was driving a 1998 burgundy Mercedes 300E sedan, yet? So this is how he's spending what's in the Sunday collection plate?"

Related Stories from the GayToday Archive:

Rome's World Pride 2000 Basks in International Attention

Pope John Paul II Condemns Rome's World Pride 2000

Vatican Condemns Homosexuality as Intrinsically Evil

Related Sites:
The Vatican

GayToday does not endorse related sites.

Nor did Kunst have kind words for plainclothes police stings, but he expressed even greater disgust at what he called the crass sensationalism of The Miami Herald which had printed the 27-year old arresting officer's account of the Rev. O'Neill's poignant sexual proposal.

The officer wrote: "He then offered me $100 to hold my penis and be affectionate with me until he ejaculated. I then gave the take-down signal [and the] defendant was arrested."

Since 1994 The Rev. On'Neill, 60, has been president of the South Florida Center for Theological Studies, president of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (now called the National Conference for Community and Justice), and has been both president and founder of the West Palm Beach-based New Hope Charities Foundation.

The arresting officer was quoted in the Herald on Thursday telling how the Rev. O'Neill had tried to hide his occupation following his arrest. But his clerical garb was found in the back seat of his Mercedes. According to the policeman's account, he asked to have his occupation kept secret but was told that such would be unethical.

It was then, according to the police, that the clergyman expressed his extreme remorse.

"I've done a very sinful thing," he said, making the sign of the cross.