Vatican Braces for More Clergy Members to be Outed For Using Grindr 

The Vatican and Catholic Churches in the U.S. are bracing for more of its clergy members to be outed for using gay dating app Grindr.

The Pillar published a report that based on “legally obtained” data there seem to be “at least 16 mobile devices [that] emitted signals from the hookup app Grindr on at least four days between March to October 2018 within the non-public areas of the Vatican City State, while 16 other devices showed use of other location-based hookup or dating apps, both heterosexual and homosexual, on four or more days in the same time period.”

The Pillar maintains that this information was obtained through commercially available app signal data, not through hacking, and that it pulled data from rectories and other clerical housing from 2018 through 2020.

Grindr fought back, asking to know the source of the leak and arguing that the company doesn’t sell the personal information of its users, and that The Pillar presented vague information about how they obtained the data. “What is clear is that this work involved much more than just a small blog…” said the company in a statement. “We do not believe Grindr to be the source of the data, nor do we think the evidence we have seen suggests this is the case. Grindr does not sell data about its users to anyone.”

This report followed an earlier scandal, when The Pillar outed a priest in the U.S. who was secretly using Grindr. Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill resigned in July of this year following the discovery that he was visiting bathhouses and meeting men on the dating app.

The Vatican and the U.S. Catholic Church have been plagued with sex scandals over the years, so this latest development has officials “on edge” according to The New York Times. So far, the Church has announced that it met with representatives from the publication but no details were given of what was discussed or if any agreements were reached. The Pillar is run by former Catholic News Service reporters JD Flynn and Ed Condon, according to Pink News.

Grindr has come under fire itself from the Norwegian Data Protection Authority and was fined 8.5 million pounds for selling user data, including private details like location information with advertisers who in turn shared that data with more than 100 partners, according to Pink. But Grindr noted that since 2020 it does not share and age, gender or location information with ad partners.

So far no additional information on priests using Grindr has been publicly disclosed.