A CATHOLIC priest in the US has been suspended from public ministry after comparing Black Lives Matter protesters to “maggots and parasites.”
Father Theodore Rothrock, pastor of St. Elizabeth Seton Parish in Carmel, Indiana, was suspended after publishing an incendiary church bulletin in which he compared the protest organisers to the Taliban in "the obliteration of our history."
"The brutal murder of a black man in police custody has sparked a landslide of reaction to the alleged systemic racism in America," Rothrock wrote.
"On the heels of the Covid sequestration, the bottled-up tension of an isolated population has exploded into riots and demonstrations that we have not seen the like in fifty years.
“What would the great visionary leaders of the past be contributing to the discussion at this point in time?" Rothrock asked in the bulletin.
"Would men like (Fredrick Douglass) and the Reverend King, both men of deep faith, be throwing bombs or even marching in the streets?" He added.
Asking readers who the “real racists” are, Rothrock described protest organizers as “wolves in wolves clothing."
"They are maggots and parasites at best, feeding off the isolation of addictions and broken families," he wrote.
"Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and the other nefarious acolytes of their persuasion are not the friends or allies we have been led to believe," he added. "They are serpents in the garden."
The Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana, which represents 24 Indiana counties, announced the decision to suspend Father Rothrock this week.
In the wake of his suspension, Rothrock issued an apology.
He did, however, express surprise at the negative reaction to it.
"It was not my intention to offend anyone, and I am sorry that my words have caused hurt to anyone," he wrote.
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