Pope Francis predicted that he would have a short papacy, yet the passing years have pretty much invalidated that prophecy. The Francis papacy is becoming epic in its duration despite visible signs of the pontiff’s declining health, namely the way he wobbles as he moves around St. Peter’s Basilica.

Francis’ body may be crumbling, but time has not muted this ruthless reformer’s iron will when it comes to changing the Catholic Church into something it has never been.

The dictator pope’s latest radical action is the laicization of Fr. Frank Pavone, a well-known anti-abortion activist and head of the stalwart Priests for Life, on blasphemy charges. “Blasphemy charges,” of course, conjures up the worst atrocities in Islam and the punishments that follow: beheadings, assassinations, honor killings, and the like.

For a Catholic priest, laicization is a kind of beheading.

A laicized priest loses the rights and privileges of clerics, such as the faculties to say Mass, hear confessions (except in danger of death), the wearing of clerical dress and the right to be addressed as “Father.” Existentially, of course, Father Pavone remains a priest forever, despite Francis’ authoritarian decree.

The Pavone “beheading” has shocked the Catholic world in a far worse way than the Amazon Synod Pachamama pagan idol scandal did in 2019.

Pavone’s problems go back to his relationship with his bishop in Amarillo, Texas, Bishop Patrick J. Zurek.

In 2017, Zurek met with Pavone and complained that he didn’t want him “doing this kind of work,” meaning of course the priest’s very public anti-abortion work. Pavone countered Zurek by saying that the work was his vocation and calling, then asked the Bishop if what he was really saying was that he should leave the priesthood.

Zurek, taken aback, uttered a dramatic protest: No, no, no, he assured Father Pavone, this is not the case at all!

That turned out to be an ecclesiastical lie because some weeks later Pavone received a letter from Zurek demanding that he leave the priesthood.

As for the blasphemy charge leveled against Father Pavone, what was it?

Was Pavone seen at strip clubs sniffing cocaine while stuffing bills into the panties of pole dancers? Was he on Grindr meeting male escorts who made him wear dog collars and bear masks a la Sam Brinton, Biden’s former waste management czar? Was he caught molesting children in a pre-K Sunday school? Or were his offenses of the liturgical variety, like orchestrating a tango Mass as Pope Francis did when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires?

The blasphemy charge leveled against Father Pavone has to do with an incident that occurred years ago during the 2020 riots, when he got into an argument on social media with a crazed leftist who drove him to say something he now regrets and even went to confession for.

During that confrontation, Father Pavone referred to “supporters of this g-ddamn loser Biden and his morally corrupt, America-hating, God-hating Democrat party.”

In the obscenity-cursing world, this is Walt Disney stuff, nothing compared to what everyone hears everyday while walking the streets of a big city.

But when the powers-that-be are after you, when those powers – meaning Bishop Zurek and his minions, with whom Father Pavone had been tangling for years – can’t wait to apply their microscope to every crack and crevice of your life, it is only a matter of time before they get you.

For Francis, the pope of Rome with the Machiavellian face, charity begins with like-mindedness. “If you are with me [ideologically] I will give you a pass. All’s well. Go in peace.”

Protest abortion, but let your protests be like the January midday sun in Lapland: weak and faded with only a couple of hours of light.  “We have the world to  contend with, the governments, Jill and Joe Biden. We must not be too strident in our opposition,” pretty much sums up Francis’ philosophy.

Pavone, however, would have none of that.

When a pathologist friend of his gave him the corpse of an aborted baby for prayers before Pavone could organize a proper funeral Mass, the priest placed the baby on a table in his chapel/study for prayers and as a lesson on the horrors of abortion.

Sensationalist reactors said that the aborted baby’s corpse was presented during Mass, which was not the case. Or they said that Pavone went too far, forgetting that lawyers present upsetting photographs of victims of crime in courtrooms during trials.

“In the chapel were only me and the baby, whose funeral has already been held and who has been laid to rest. No family were present, because they rejected the child and had him killed. His body would have been thrown in the garbage had we not accepted it,” Father Pavone said.

As Father Pavone told one Catholic podcaster: “I’m waiting for them [the Vatican] to point out to me what I did wrong that merits something like this.”

Pavone added that ultimately he and his allies “would have to appeal to the next pope” and “to the people of God.”

Only divine intervention, of course, will cause the next pope to be something other than Francis.  More likely than not, the next pope will be a duplicate in spades, a mega-Francis who will continue along the same serpentine path.

The New York Times had this to say about Pavone’s dismissal:

“The punishment of a high-profile Catholic anti-abortion activist comes at a precarious moment for the movement as it plans its future after losses in the midterm election and struggles to unify Republicans around the issue. Mr. Pavone’s anti-abortion activism was not cited in the letter as the reason for his dismissal.”

“I’ve been persecuted in the church for decades, decades. This is nothing new for me,” Pavone said. “They just don’t like the work I’m doing for these babies.”

Pavone told The Washington Post that his actions caused “no small controversy,” but added that, “My followers agree that the truth about abortion has to be seen, because the word has lost all its meaning. We sanitize it.”

Although the mainstream media refers to Pavone as “Mr. Pavone” because of his laicization, conservative and traditional Catholic voices continue to refer to him as “Father Pavone.”

Asked how the pope’s official “cancellation” of him as a priest would affect his work going forward, Father Pavone said that nothing would change.

In one video, dressed in full clericals, Father Pavone said he will continue to lead Priests for Life, and that nothing would change although he fully expects Francis to excommunicate him.

Father Pavone is certain that excommunication will be the next step, and that it’s only a matter of time before Francis proceeds to take this action in his campaign to silence authentic Catholic voices.