Excommunication of renegade Sacramento priest roils Catholic diocese. Here’s why it happened

By Ryan Sabalow And Dale Kasler
Sacramento Bee
August 12, 2020

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article244884637.html

The priest excommunicated last week for refusing to acknowledge Pope Francis as his church’s rightful leader might not be well known outside the community of more than 1 million Catholics who belong to the Diocese of Sacramento.

But his last name certainly is familiar in the region.

Father Jeremy Leatherby, 41, is the grandson of the founders of Leatherby’s Family Creamery, a small but popular chain of ice cream parlors.

Known for its charity as much as its sundaes and milkshakes, the Leatherby family also has long espoused a staunchly conservative brand of Catholicism. The Leatherbys have strong ties to the anti-abortion movement and donated thousands of dollars to the Proposition 8 ballot initiative to ban same-sex marriage in California in 2008, which triggered months of protests at the three restaurants.

Now the excommunication of Jeremy Leatherby exposes a deepening rift over the direction Catholicism is taking under Pope Francis. To the dismay of some conservatives, the Argentine-born pope has taken markedly progressive stances on issues like immigration and climate change since replacing the more traditionalist Pope Benedict XVI in 2013. The pope also sought to change church policy around centuries-old practices such as advocating for remarried people to receive communion.

In his letter to the Catholic community, Bishop Jaime Soto, leader of the Sacramento diocese, said Leatherby “violated my instructions” by conducting Mass at people’s homes during the pandemic, substituting Benedict’s name for Francis’ during those services and omitting Soto’s name from certain prayers — while already serving a suspension imposed four years ago over an allegation of having an inappropriate relationship with a woman in his parish.

Leatherby was suspended in 2016 to investigate “credible allegations of ministerial boundary violations with an adult woman,” the diocese said in an August 2018 memo to priests that The Sacramento Bee obtained.

The woman’s lawyer, Bruce Ebert of Roseville, said the 18-month relationship with the woman who taught at Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish school in the Arden Arcade area was consensual, but it never should have happened.

“Father Leatherby, from what I’ve been able to learn... he has a very dynamic personality, and people think he’s God,” Ebert said. “She really believed he was a saintly figure and felt she had to do everything that he told her to do.”

The Sacramento Bee isn’t identifying the woman. She didn’t respond to an interview request.

Though he admits the relationship was inappropriate, Leatherby denies having sexual contact with the woman.

“Believe me, there is another side,” he said in a letter to his followers. “I could expose much, but have refrained all this time. I don’t need or want to ruin other people’s lives, marriage or families, even at the cost of my own. But I guarantee you that I have solid evidence that severely undercuts and disproves the venom being spread about me.”

He and his family believe they’ve been victimized by Soto for allowing the investigation to drag on for four years without resolution.

“He believes Soto has abused his authority,” said Jeremy Leatherby’s father, Dave Leatherby Jr. “It has been a great suffering …. It has been a humiliation, not just for him. My family has a public name.”

Excommunications are rare, and the Leatherby case has drawn coverage from the likes of the National Catholic Reporter, a major religious newspaper.

Jeremy Leatherby has acknowledged he crossed a line with the married parishioner.

“I have admitted from the beginning that I violated boundaries in ways with that woman, which is why up until the present day I have cooperated with the juridical process,” he said in the letter posted on a website run by a dissident group that’s dedicated to fighting on his behalf, the St. Joseph’s Battalion Sacramento.

“Sadly I have never had the opportunity to apologize to that woman, because I was forbidden from having any form of communication with her. ... In your heart, I hope you will forgive me for the hurt that I have caused you.”

Nonetheless, Leatherby and his family insist the allegations should have been resolved years ago. The diocese passed the investigation along to the Vatican, where the matter remains pending.

“He has waited four and a half years for a hearing, an investigation, a trial,” said Dave Leatherby Jr., who was a deacon at his son’s parish until requesting a leave of absence in June for health reasons. “It has been a tremendous injustice. … He tried to be obedient to the bishop.”

At one point during his suspension, Jeremy Leatherby was sent to the St. John Vianney Center, a church-run facility in Pennsylvania where members of the Catholic clergy are sent for counseling and treatment. He spent five months there before being allowed to leave, according to his letter.

Jeremy’s uncle, Alan Leatherby, who is president of the family business, said his nephew acknowledged wrongdoing in private conversations, but never went into detail about what he did. He told his uncle that his actions amounted to “nothing that would bring removal from the priesthood.”

Soto, who oversees a territory stretching from Vallejo to the Oregon border, also insisted Leatherby’s excommunication was unrelated to the allegations that led to the 2016 suspension. Rather, it was Leatherby’s insistence on holding Mass in parishioners’ homes during the coronavirus pandemic, when churches have been closed, and what he did and didn’t say during those services.

“He has substituted the Holy Father’s name with the name of his predecessor, and omitted my name during the recitation of the Eucharistic Prayer while offering Mass,” Soto said in his letter to the diocese. During a section of the Mass prior to communion, a priest is supposed to ask the congregation to bless the pope and the bishop.

“After obstinately not responding to a number of my inquiries by telephone and correspondence, he has now confirmed his schismatic stance,” Soto continued in his letter. “Because of the grave scandal of these actions I have no recourse but to announce publicly the consequence of his decisions.”

In his letter to the community, Leatherby said he couldn’t stand by while parishioners’ spiritual needs were being neglected during the pandemic. He began celebrating Mass in people’s homes, a development that grew so popular that “ultimately, 350 people a weekend were attending.”

As the case against his grandson dragged on, before Dave Leatherby Sr. died last year, the family patriarch and founder of the Leatherby’s restaurant chain took his frustrations with Soto public.

Starting about two years ago, according to his son Dave Leatherby Jr.,the elder Leatherby began picketing outside the downtown Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament — the bishop’s home church — to protest Jeremy’s treatment.

That same year, he gave an interview in which he suggested that the allegations against his grandson represented a form of retaliation after Dave Leatherby Jr., Jeremy’s dad, blew the whistle on sexual misconduct in the diocese.

Speaking to a conservative Catholic website called Church Militant, the senior Leatherby said his son reported an incident in which he was told that a housekeeper had seen two members of the clergy together in bed. When Dave Leatherby Jr. reported that allegation to a diocese official, the official “blew up at him,” the senior Leatherby said.

Within the week, Jeremy Leathery was accused of inappropriate conduct and “given two hours to move out of his rectory,” the elder Leatherby said.

Dave Jr. confirmed the gist of the story his late father told and says he’s convinced this is why his son Jeremy was initially suspended. “I believe that these things are related,” he said.

Diocese spokesman Bryan Visitacion said in an emailed statement that Jeremy Leatherby’s 2016 suspension was “the result of an allegation of inappropriate conduct with an adult woman. We take all such allegations seriously and investigate, which is what we did in this case. We have no comment on alternate theories or rumors suggesting some other reason for this action.”

The diocese has also been adamant that it vigorously investigates any allegations of inappropriate conduct.

Last year the diocese released a list of more than 40 priests who had been credibly accused of sexually abusing 130 victims over the past 70 years. Soto called the cases “gut wrenching.”

The diocese has paid millions of dollars to its victims, including one settlement totaling $35 million in which 33 victims accused 10 priests of abuse.

An Iowa native, the senior Leatherby opened the first Leatherby’s restaurant with his wife, Sally, in 1982.

The Leatherbys have long been a supporter of traditionally conservative Catholic causes, and they consider their faith intertwined with their business. When “Daddy Dave” died last year, Alan said at his funeral that his father’s legacy “will be that we continue to be faithful to God, to be generous to the poor and the needy.”

But the Leatherbys’ devotion to their faith has brought them controversy.

After the family donated $20,000 to Proposition 8, the three restaurants were picketed, and the Leatherbys received a barrage of hostile phone calls and emails.

Rejecting same-sex marriage “is a Catholic belief,” said Dave Leatherby Jr. “We were persecuted for that.”

Nevertheless, Alan Leatherby said customers stuck with the restaurants, probably out of respect for the family’s long record of charitable work in the communities. “The opposition said they were going to shut us down, but we had a surge in business,” he said.

Jeremy Leatherby’s aunt, Marie Leatherby, is executive director of The Sacramento Life Center, a faith-based nonprofit that counsels women about pregnancies.

Those sorts of clinics are controversial in California; abortion rights supporters have complained they mislead women about their options, and in 2015 they persuaded then-Gov. Jerry Brown to sign Assembly Bill 775, which required clinics like the Life Center to post signs outlining the availability of “free or low-cost access” to abortions and birth control. The law was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018.

Marie Leatherby didn’t respond to an interview request, but in 2015 she told The Bee she said her center doesn’t try to steer women away from abortions, but “we respect life, in the womb also.” She estimated that 90% of the women who visit her clinic wind up giving birth.

She said the Sacramento Diocese was one of the center’s donors.

Dave Leatherby Jr. said that over the last couple of years, his son became convinced that Francis isn’t the legitimate pope. That’s why his son substituted Benedict’s name for Francis’ during his pandemic Masses.

Jeremy Leatherby believes both Francis and Soto “are deviating from the truth,” he said. Francis in particular “has caused a great disruption in the church. He has done severe harm.”

By contrast, Benedict adhered “more to what the church has taught for over 2,000 years.”

In his letter, Jeremy Leatherby said he couldn’t follow Francis “morally, spiritually or intellectually, in good conscience.” Among other things, he faulted Francis for declaring in 2017 that Catholics who’d been divorced and remarried could be allowed to receive communion. What’s more, he believes that Benedict’s resignation in 2013 didn’t fulfill all the church’s legal requirements.

“There is definitely a growing number (of Catholics) with serious reservations about Pope Francis,” Leatherby said in a statement to The Bee forwarded by his lawyer, John Broghammer of Roseville. “At least several hundred faithful Catholics in the Sacramento area are of the opinion that Pope Benedict never truly resigned the papacy and remains the true Pope.”

Among some conservative Catholics, dissatisfaction with Francis — and Soto — runs deep.

The Church Militant story about Jeremy Leatherby criticized the bishop for supporting immigration rights and Pope Francis’ “climate change narrative.” Conservatives also complained when Soto hosted LGBT and abortion rights supporting politicians at the downtown cathedral.

To some extent, the split that’s emerged in Sacramento is happening across the country.

Most American Catholics support Pope Francis. A poll taken in January by the Pew Research Center found that 77 percent of American Catholics had a favorable view of the pope.

But the fierce political polarization that has swept the country is starting to manifest itself among Catholic faithful. The poll showed that Francis was supported by 87% of Catholic Democrats but only 71% of Republicans, said Greg Smith, associate director of religion research at Pew.

On issues where Pope Francis has taken progressive stances on issues such as President Trump’s border wall, U.S. Catholics are split along nearly the same partisan lines as non-Catholics, Smith said.

“While most Catholics say they have a favorable view of Pope Francis, we’ve begun to see that polarization creep in the views of the pope over the last couple of years,” Smith said.

But a much smaller minority within American and Western European Catholics believe like Leatherby does that Francis is an “anti-Pope” and shouldn’t be in power, said Zach Flanagin, professor of theology and religious studies at St. Mary’s College of California.

“The much smaller group is not really concerned with environmental issues, and they’re not concerned with the immigration issues as the primary thing,” Flanagin said. “They’re really concerned almost exclusively with ritual issues,” such as remarried Catholics receiving communion.