PROVIDENCE (RI)
The Pillar [Washington DC]
November 6, 2026
By The Pillar
The institute did not answer questions about the priest’s status in the Church
The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter has declined to disclose details about the laicization process for a priest convicted in 2023 of downloading and storing thousands of files containing child sexual abuse material.
James Jackson is serving a six-year federal prison term, and was laicized in January 2025, according to a March report from the Rhode Island attorney general’s office. The laicization has not yet been widely reported.
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Jackson, 71, was in September 2023 sentenced to six years in federal prison, after he pleaded guilty three months earlier to a felony count of receiving child sex abuse material.
The priest had accepted a plea deal in which prosecutors agreed to drop possession of child pornography charges in exchange for his guilty plea to receiving child pornography, according to federal database records and the Providence Journal.
He initially had pleaded not guilty to the federal charges, which came after an October 2021 arrest. In that year, police identified a device sharing child pornography with an IP address assigned to St. Mary’s Catholic Parish in Providence, RI, where Jackson served.
Law enforcement officers executed a search warrant and found an external hard drive containing thousands of pornographic images, which they said belonged to Jackson.
Jackson was a prominent member of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, a clerical association which offers the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, also called the Traditional Latin Mass.
The priest’s initial arrest divided some traditionalist Catholics, with some claiming that Jackson was not computer savvy enough to have committed child porn crimes, and some suggesting the priest had been framed, or that child porn seized at his rectory belonged to someone else.
But ahead of his sentencing, Jackson took responsibility for the crime to which he pled guilty.
“The vile sin into which I fell, and for which I am guilty, has caused immeasurable harm,” Jackson explained in a handwritten letter dated Aug. 6, and reportedly sent to his religious provincial superior and other members of his religious community.
“I have sinned against God, children, you, friends and family, former students and former parishioners and many others besides,” Jackson wrote. “I cannot repair this damage, but I must try. I hope you will accept this apology.”
“I’m sorry at a level I’ve never experienced before. I’m ashamed beyond any shame I’ve known,” he added.
Jackson told the judge that his conduct was “hypocritical” and “completely unbecoming of a devout Catholic and more so, a clergyman.”
At the same time, Jackson told law enforcement that he was abused when he was 10 years old, allegedly by the mother of a fellow child in his Boy Scout troop. Attorneys said that constituted an “explanation” for his crimes.
“While there is no excuse or justification for Mr. Jackson’s admitted misconduct, such is not without explanation. As a young boy, while participating in Boy Scouts, Mr. Jackson was molested,” the memo said.
“These events were not timely reported or disclosed to anyone, foreclosing the possibility of young James receiving proper care or treatment for his trauma. In any event, these experiences shaped and socialized him, at least partially, into the man he is today.”
“Mr. Jackson channeled that trauma and addressed it by pursuing and viewing child pornography. His doing so resulted in the development of an addiction to these obscene visual depictions, which explains how and why he comes before this Court.”
But federal prosecutors focused on the victims of Jackson’s crime.
“The victims in this case are real children who were raped and molested in order to provide sexual gratification for the defendant. By repeatedly downloading and viewing child sexual abuse material for his own gratification, this defendant engaged in repeated acts of dehumanization which re-victimized the children,” prosecutors wrote.
“More than 12,000 images and videos depicting child sexual abuse were located on the defendant’s computers. These materials included pre-pubescent minors, sadistic and masochistic conduct, and bestiality. Through his reprehensible conduct, the defendant fueled the market for child sexual abuse material and further harmed the victims.”
According to federal prosecutors, 190 victims of child abuse sex could be identified in the cache of images and videos in Jackson’s possession.
In response to her abuse, one victim stated that: “I live everyday with the horrible knowledge that many people somewhere are watching the most terrifying moments of my life and taking grotesque pleasure in them. I am a victim of the worst kind of exploitation: child porn. Unlike other forms of exploitation, this one is never ending. Everyday, people are trading and sharing videos of me as a little girl being raped in the most sadistic ways. They don’t know me, but they have seen every part of me. They are being entertained by my pain and shame.”
Prosecutors noted that a “particularly disturbing fact in this case is the defendant’s position of authority as a Catholic priest and pastor. As such, the defendant was looked up to by many as a paragon of moral authority.”
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According to the Rhode Island attorney general’s office, Jackson was laicized in January 2025.
The Fraternity of St. Peter confirmed Jackson’s laicization to The Pillar this week, and indicated that Jackson “is not a member of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter.”
But the FSSP did not respond to additional questions from The Pillar regarding the circumstances of that laicization.
The fraternity did not answer questions about whether Jackson voluntarily petitioned for laicization and a canonical indult of departure from his religious community, or was instead dismissed penally from the clerical state and from his religious order.
Possession of child pornography is considered a “grave delict,” or major crime, in the Church’s canon law, and can lead to laicization and dismissal from religious life, after a canonical penal process.
But the Vatican permits priests facing the prospect of a penal process to petition voluntarily for laicization — the approval of such a petition ordinarily correlates to a cessation of the canonical trial or penal process.
Priests facing the prospect of penal laicization sometimes petition for voluntary laicization for a variety of reasons: Some have little interest in a protracted penal process, others petition for laicization while reaching some agreement with their religious community or diocese about retirement funding.
The Fraternity of St. Peter is a society of apostolic life, a canonical form of consecrated life which does not necessarily require members to renounce the possession of goods or property, or the right to earned benefits like defined benefit or defined contribution retirement plans. But the fraternity does not indicate publicly whether members participate in such plans — it is therefore unclear whether Jackson has attained some future financial benefit upon which he can rely after he is released from prison. But his dismissal from the society means it is not responsible for his ongoing support at that time.
According to the federal Department of Corrections, Jackson is incarcerated at a federal medical center prison in Massachusetts. The facility is host to a federal residential sex offender treatment program, and for that reason houses many offenders convicted of sexual crimes against children.
According to a federal inmate database, Jackson is scheduled to be released in August 2027.