SF pastor claims 'news reports on COVID are largely unreal'
A San Francisco pastor wrote in a bulletin to his congregation that "news reports on COVID are largely unreal" and suggested without evidence that the media have inflated the severity of the pandemic to unseat President Donald Trump.
The Rev. Joseph Illo of Star of the Sea Catholic Church in the Inner Richmond said that working as a priest for 30 years, he knows thousands of people personally, but says only three of them have contracted the coronavirus.
He suggested that the intent of the media's coverage of the pandemic is to unseat Trump in the November election. "We cannot ignore the fact that the glaring discrepancy between hospital reports and media reports is taking place in an election year," he wrote.
Star of the Sea is among 90 parishes in Marin, San Mateo and San Francisco counties that are members of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Archdiocese spokesman Mike Brown explained each pastor "runs their own show" and "we really don't have an opinion on what each pastor writes."
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SF-pastor-News-reports-on-COVID-are-largely-15440632.php
= new reply since forum marked as read
He was installed at Star of the Sea, over the complaints of the parishioners, by noted self-loathing homophobe Salvador Cordileone, the ultra-right-wing Archbishop installed here by Ratzinger. Sal wants SotS to be a regressive, pre-Vatican II parish, and Illo began his reign of terror at SotS by eliminating all of the female altar servers.
SFist has a good article about Illo's insanity that also includes some background on how despised he is by SotS parishioners as a whole:
https://sfist.com/2020/07/29/sf-catholic-priest-implores-congregants-to-come-to-mass-says-covid/
In a recent blog entry, the little prick issues a classic passive-aggressive "sorry if your feelings were hurt" non-apology 
Some have been saying that I trivialized the pandemic in my bulletin column last Sunday. It was not my intention to make light of the disease or the suffering it is causing. I have always taken the safety of our people seriously, and have gone to great lengths to make sure our church is distanced and sanitized at all times. In a letter to priests last week, Archbishop Cordileone asked us to “please regularly remind people to follow the safety practices necessary to curb the spread of the virus. This is real, it is dangerous, and it has to be taken seriously.” I am committed to his directive, and am truly sorry that some were scandalized by what they felt was a priest’s insensitivity toward their suffering.
... THEN goes on to tell us that dying is WAY better than, you know, protecting yourself against COVID-19:
Oh, and, um, in case you forgot, he's REAL real "pro-life"
But only newborn fresh "life", so all the rest of us used-up skin bags can go die of COVID-19.
A comment on his blog about the annual misogynist hate march in SF:
Illo is a vicious little weasel in Sal's little fiefdom at SotS.
