"You bigot, O'Connor, you're killing us!" screamed one protester, while signs called the archbishop "Murderer!"
Then it got really ugly. Scores of protesters entered the church, resulting in what many in the packed house of parishioners described as a "nightmare."
"The radical homosexuals turned a celebration of the Holy Eucharist into a screaming babble of sacrilege by standing in the pews, shouting and waving their fists, tossing condoms into the air," recounted the New York Post. One of the invaders grabbed a consecrated wafer and threw it to the ground.
Outside, demonstrators, many of them members of ACT-UP, carried placards that summed up their sentiments toward the Catholic Church: "Keep your church out of my crotch." "Keep your rosaries off my ovaries." "Eternal life to Cardinal John O'Connor NOW!" "Curb your dogma."
In 1989, homosexual activists chained themselves to pews during a Mass at St. Patrick’s, throwing condoms at the cardinal during the consecration. Thereafter, the gays and lesbians hi-jacked the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade and hurled blasphemous insults while passing by the cathedral, where Cardinal O’Connor watched the parade year after year. Meanwhile the cardinal was opening houses for AIDS patients and making unannounced visits to Catholic hospitals where he ministered to AIDS patients, most of them homosexuals. In fact, USA Today once reported that he "washed the hair and emptied bedpans of dying AIDS patients, some too sick to know who he was."
Farewell to a Prince of the Church
Catholic Ping
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