Why the Catholic Church expelled me w/Roy Bourgeois | The Chris Hedges Report

Why the Catholic Church expelled me w/Roy Bourgeois | The Chris Hedges Report

By any standard, Roy Bourgeois is an exemplary human being, a great man. But few Americans have heard of him, lest the story he has to tell is heard by the masses. You know why that is.

As a young man, Roy Bourgeois enlisted to fight in the Vietnam War. After being injured, he became a volunteer at a local orphanage and was inspired to become a priest upon his return to the US. Bourgeois became a priest in Bolivia during the dictatorship of General Hugo Banzer. He decided he could not be an apolitical priest. He spoke out against Banzer's political repression, leading to his arrest and expulsion from Bolivia. Back in the US, Bourgeois organized protests outside Fort Benning, Georgia, where the US was training Salvadorian soldiers to fight the leftist insurgency ("death squads", also used in many other nations of Latin America, Africa and Asia). He was imprisoned twice for illegally entering the base during planned direct actions against the war. In 2012, Bourgeois was excommunicated by the Catholic Church for supporting the ordination of women.

Roy B. is 6th from the left.

Roy Bourgeois is an American activist, a laicized Roman Catholic priest, and the founder of the human rights group School of the Americas Watch (SOA Watch). He is the author of Stop the Killing: My Journey from Silence to Solidarity and Male Supremacy in the Catholic Church: An Insider's View.