In support of Father Frank Pavone (I will always call him Father) I have taken these excerpts from his newsletter to members of the Priests for Life Family, and from Life Site News.
Please support Father Frank by making a donation and signing the petition to restore him to the Priesthood at:
Priests for Life
https://www.priestsforlife.org/
Thank you for your consideration and may God bless you and your family.
Barbara Hartwell
December 20, 2025
NOTE FROM FATHER FRANK PAVONE
Tomorrow we will have my Mom’s funeral Mass at the parish where I grew up. I will be surrounded by family, friends, and prolife supporters, including our fulltime pastoral associate Fr. Denis Wilde, O.S.A., whom I have asked to be the celebrant and homilist for the Mass.
He did the same for my Dad’s funeral three years ago. I was not allowed by the Pope to be the priest-celebrant of either of those liturgies, because for the last 24 years, some misguided Church leaders have tried to block my ministry and take away my priesthood.
They have no rationale whatsoever. Zero.
LETTER TO POPE LEO
I write to you today because last evening, the Lord called home to himself my mother, Marion Pavone.
I would like to request your permission to celebrate her funeral Mass at the end of this week, for my family and friends.
Your Holiness, in these years since my laicization, I have lived as a practicing Catholic and have abided by the restrictions of which I was made aware in 2022.
Moreover, I have continued in the capacity of a layman, embracing the single life, the prolife work I have done fulltime in the Church since 1993, ever intent on seeking admission once again to priestly ministry.
I pray you will consider favorably my request. Please be assured of my daily prayers for you.
COMMENTARY FROM JOHN HENRY WESTEN, LIFE SITE NEWS
Pope Leo’s Nuncio to the United States has refused the request of America’s best-known pro-life priest from offering a funeral Mass for his mother, who died at 91 on December 15.
Cardinal Christophe Pierre replied Thursday to a December 16 request for permission from Frank Pavone, saying “I believe that the limitations imposed by your canonical status, compounded by the complexity of your public profile, make it impossible for the request to be considered.”
I just asked Fr. Pavone what he thought about Pope Leo's representative refusing him permission to offer a funeral mass for his mom who just died.
Here was Fr. Pavone's reply:
"I do not need any lectures about Canon law. I need common sense, compassion, and what Pope Francis called “accompaniment,“ which the Vatican seems to love to talk about rather than practice. For the last 24 years I have had it up to my ears with canon lawyers and bishops who pay no attention to nurturing my vocation or the work of the prolife movement. But I know exactly what my vocation is, as do those who support me, and nothing, absolutely nothing, will keep me from pursuing it for the saving of the unborn, the healing of those wounded by abortion, and the encouragement of the prolife people of God."
Pavone, one of the most well-known pro-life priests around the world, was laicized by personal order of Pope Francis in 2022, in a move widely believed to be punishment for Pavone’s stance on abortion which was so opposite that of Francis, who welcomed abortionists and population controllers into the Vatican.
The previous Nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò denounced Fr. Pavone’s laicization as “unjust and illegitimate punishment” and an attempt “to feed a climate of terror among the clergy so as to constrain them into servile and fearful obedience.”
Despite the startling charges of blasphemy and disobedience which the Vatican leveled against Pavone as the reason for the decision, Vatican Cardinal Gerhard Müller told LifeSiteNews at the time that it was “not justified” and “political.” The former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith added: “I think there was truly a lot of pressure [from] the Democratic Party.”
Bishop Joseph Strickland, then-ordinary of Tyler, Texas, also condemned Francis’s blasphemy accusation against Pavone by saying on Twitter, “The blasphemy is that this holy priest is canceled while an evil president promotes the denial of truth & the murder of the unborn at every turn, Vatican officials promote immorality & denial of the deposit of faith & priests promote gender confusion devastating lives…evil.”
