Priest Caught Using Grindr Sues Gay App Because It Ruined His Chance of a Bishopric

Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill says he didn’t know Grindr would share his sensitive information with third parties

Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill

A high-ranking priest who was outed as a practicing homosexual for using Grindr to find men to hook up with is suing the company that owns the app on the grounds that his exposure has derailed his chances of becoming a bishop.

Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, who held the topmost clerical position in the U.S. as general secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), filed his case on April 9 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, stating that Grindr “falsely and misleadingly represents” that it does not sell its users’ data.

The priest is accusing the LGBTQ+ app company of unfair, deceptive, and unlawful business practices under California’s Consumer Legal Remedies and Unfair Competition Law, contending that Grindr misled him by not disclosing the fact that his sensitive data could be sold and his anonymity removed.

Grindr has contested Burrill’s claims, asserting that its privacy policy clearly states that Grindr shares personal information with third-party partners, including service providers, advertising and marketing partners, and other partners.

Privacy for Priest on Grindr?

The information includes the user’s precise location and information that may be deemed “sensitive” or “special category” in certain jurisdictions such as ethnicity, information about one’s sex life, sexual preferences, or one’s self-reported health information.

Grindr’s lawyers maintain that its arbitration agreement makes this clear.

“I do not recall seeing an arbitration agreement with Grindr,” Burrill said. “Because I do not recall seeing an arbitration agreement, I also do not recall if I ever opted out of an arbitration agreement.”

The priest also insisted that when he began using the gay dating app, he would be required to arbitrate any disputes.

“Defendant presents no evidence of a signed agreement or any electronic data to verify that plaintiff, personally, clicked a word, checked a box or otherwise assented to an agreement,” Burrill’s attorneys argued.

Burrill Outed

Last July, Burrill hired two law firms to sue Grindr, claiming that its sale of his information caused him to lose his position as the general secretary for the USCCB, as well as causing him “significant financial and emotional distress.”

Grindr failed to protect Burrill’s sensitive information and knowingly allowed it to be sold to third parties, the law firms argued.

Between 2017 and 2021, the Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal (CLCR), a private foundation, purchased Burrill’s personal data from Grindr and shared it with The Pillar — a Catholic news outlet that then broke the story on Burrill.

In July 2021, Burrill was forced to resign after the story revealed that he used the app to frequent gay bars while traveling on USCCB business.

Grindr User Reinstated

Faithful Catholics were shocked when Burrill was allowed to return to active ministry and reinstated as the parochial administrator of St. Teresa of Kolkata Parish in West Salem by Bishop William Callahan of La Crosse, Wisconsin in June 2022.

In a statement to parishioners, Callahan said Burrill was returning after an “extended leave” and had “engaged in a sincere and prayerful effort to strengthen his priestly vows and has favorably responded to every request made by me and by the Diocese” during that time.

“Let me state unequivocally that the Diocese of La Crosse has received no allegations of illegal misconduct of any kind by Monsignor Burrill,” he added, expressing his confidence in Burrill’s “ability to accompany the people of God of this great parish as together you journey toward a deeper, more meaningful relationship with the Person of Jesus Christ.”

In an investigation costing $4 million, CLCR also identified a significant number of seminarians and priests who use homosexual dating and hook-up apps.

Clergy Using Hook-Up Apps

Grindr is the gay hook-up app most frequently used by clerics, but priests also using lesser-known apps like Growlr, Scruff, and Jack’d as well as heterosexual dating and casual hook-up apps like OkCupid, the Washington Post reported.

CLCR President Jayd Henricks admitted that the group had obtained “publicly available data, bought in the ordinary way,” exposing clerics who were violating their promises of celibacy.

“As we analyzed it, it became clear that heterosexual and homosexual hook-up apps were used by some seminarians and some priests in some places, and with volumes and patterns suggesting those were not isolated moral lapses by individuals,” Henricks said. “It should be noted that these sorts of hook-up apps are designed specifically for casual, anonymous sexual encounters.

“It’s not about straight or gay priests and seminarians, it’s about behavior that harms everyone involved, at some level and in some way, and is a witness against the ministry of the Church,” he added. “The Church desperately needs holy priests.”

Burrill, who was the highest-ranking American cleric who is not a bishop, used Grindr to hook up with men in gay bars and private residences for sex in numerous cities from 2018 to 2020, even while traveling on assignment for the USCCB, The Pillar reported in July 2021.

Signals from Vatican Devices

Moreover, “during a period of 26 weeks in 2018, at least 32 mobile devices emitted serially occurring hookup or dating app signals “from secured areas and buildings of the Vatican ordinarily inaccessible to tourists and pilgrims,” The Pillar reported.

At least 16 mobile devices emitted signals from Grindr on at least four days between March and October 2018 in the Vatican’s secured sections. Both heterosexual and homosexual sex-cruising apps were accessed on 16 other devices on four or more days in the same period.

“It’s true, as part of our data analysis work, we learned that some clergy were publicly advertising their interest in actions that contradicted their promises of celibacy,” Henricks wrote in First Things. “And there have been news reports about priests arrested for criminal use of such apps.”

Henricks defended the use of data to identify errant clergy, explaining that his organization had chosen not to publicize clergy were using hook-up apps. Instead, CLCR’s policy is “to put everything at the disposal of the bishops, to treat any work we do as a service, freely offered and freely given, for them to use in the best ways they see fit,” Henricks explained.

Liberals Decry Outing of Gay Clergy

Liberals responded with outrage to the news of CLCR’s investigations. “They are spying on priests to make sure they keep it in their pants,” Michael Sean Winters wrote in the left-wing National Catholic Reporter.

Winters compared it to the Salem witch trials, the Stasi, and the KGB, asking: “Have the culture wars so consumed the Denver conservative Catholic mafia that such villainous analogies spring to mind?

“Before Grindr there was Peyton Place and before that there was Lady Chatterley’s Lover and before that there were ancient Roman Bacchanalia. So what? Violating people’s privacy is sinful too,” Winters wrote. “The people involved in this effort to spy on priests are creeps.”

Vatican’s Grindr Users

In 2019, gay journalist Frédéric Martel published revelations of clergy in the Vatican using Grindr and other sex cruising apps in his controversial 550-page book In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy.

“My team and I have also managed to prove that Grindr does its job every evening inside the Vatican state,” wrote Martel. “Often priests spot each other without meaning to, having discovered that another gay cleric is a few meters away.”

According to Martel, several priests report that “Grindr has become a very widespread phenomenon in seminaries and priests’ meetings.” One priest told Martel that “he was trying to stay pious by not having sex with his Grindr contacts until the third date.”

To evade the high level of digital surveillance the Vatican uses to screen phones and computers, “Curia prelates” bought “second private mobile phones” to “hook up on Grindr,” allowing them to “get through the firewall” to erotic sites, Martel revealed.

Grindr Priests and Global Scandals

In 2016, St. Patrick’s Seminary in Maynooth, Ireland, was rocked by a scandal forcing the archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, to rusticate several seminarians who were using Grindr to hook up with other gay men.

“If this is going on a large scale in the seminary and it hasn’t been noticed in the seminary, then there is something wrong,” Martin confessed. The use of Grindr “would be inappropriate for seminarians and not just because they are going to be celibate priests.”

In 2021, Fr. Robert McWilliams from the diocese of Cleveland was arrested for using Grindr to meet a 15-year-old boy, whom he paid for sex on multiple occasions.

McWilliams also used apps like TextMe and TextNow to hide his phone number when communicating with minors, and apps like Craigslist and Grindr to locate young males and arrange sexual encounters.

The former priest, who was laicized and sentenced to life imprisonment for child trafficking, child abuse, and child exploitation, later committed suicide.

In November 2022, Fr. Yannick Poligné from the French diocese of Rennes used Grindr to seduce a 15-year-old boy. The 52-year-old priest drugged and raped his victim in a hotel room in Paris. The priest told investigators he was a regular on Grindr.

Originally published in The Stream.

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Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.