A Priest Was Outed by His Phone’s Location Data, Likely Through Ad Tech Middle Parties — Pixel Envy

This is one of those stories that gets into some difficult territory as far as my writing about it goes. These are not light topics.

Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, former general secretary of the U.S. bishops’ conference, announced his resignation Tuesday, after The Pillar found evidence the priest engaged in serial sexual misconduct, while he held a critical oversight role in the Catholic Church’s response to the recent spate of sexual abuse and misconduct scandals.

According to commercially available records of app signal data obtained by The Pillar, a mobile device correlated to Burrill emitted app data signals from the location-based hookup app Grindr on a near-daily basis during parts of 2018, 2019, and 2020 — at both his USCCB office and his USCCB-owned residence, as well as during USCCB meetings and events in other cities.

I do not wish to devalue any reader’s faith; if you are Catholic, please know that I am not criticizing you specially or your beliefs.

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