No compromising God

The case of Mary Stachowicz has become a public issue once again, and thank God for it. She was murdered in 2002 by 19-year old co-worker Nicholas Guiterrez after urging him to abandon his homosexual lifestyle. In response the young man beat, stabbed and strangled the 51-year-old mother of four to death and stuffed her body in a bag which he hid in a crawl space in his apartment.

Thomas J. Paprocki, auxiliary bishop of Chicago, then a parish priest, knew Stachowicz and was pastor of the church where she worked part-time as a secretary. He recently described her as a martyr, having been “pure of heart and devoted to chastity” and that if it be God’s will, “she will be glorified by the Church” as a saint.

I have no idea if the poor woman will ever be canonized but I do know that she died because she dared to question homosexuality, and that her fate was largely ignored by the mainstream media. The surprisingly but refreshingly forthright Bishop Paprocki compared this horrific case to that of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man who was murdered in 1998.