The Pillar is an American news website focusing on the Catholic Church. The site was founded in 2021 by two journalist canon lawyers: J.D. Flynn, former editor-in-chief of Catholic News Agency and former chancellor of the Archdiocese of Denver, and Ed Condon, former Washington, D.C., bureau editor of Catholic News Agency.^[1]

Publication history

Notable pieces published by the site include a July 2021 story which reported on cell phone location data which showed that Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, the top administrator of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, had frequented gay bars and the Grindr app.^[2]

Burrill resigned from the USCCB after The Pillar notified the USCCB that it was going to publish the story. The site's methods of obtaining Burrill's location history were legal, but raised privacy concerns.^[2] In a Religion News Service column appearing in The Washington Post, theology professor Steven P. Millies decried the investigation as "unethical, homophobic innuendo" and wrote that The Pillar "must not have thought about the Code of Canon Law" and "The Pillar's investigators paid little heed also to the canons of ethics for journalists".^[3] Others, including Matthew Hennessey of The Wall Street Journal, dismissed allegations of homophobic intent while applauding the reporting with a favorable comparison it to similar phone data-based reporting by The New York Times.^[4]