A priest who thinks homosexuals should be put to death, like the Bible says, has cut up and burned a rainbow pride flag… ignoring direct orders from the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Rev. Paul Kalchik, a Roman Catholic priest at Resurrection Parish in Chicago, announced earlier in the month that he would burn a rainbow flag that was previously displayed at the church (seen below during the church’s inaugural Mass). He reportedly compared the Church’s “homosexual scandal” to a modern Sodom and Gomorrah.

But the higher-ups at the Church vowed to stop to the ridiculous stunt before he went through with it.

When the Archdiocese of Chicago got wind of Kalchik’s plans to burn the rainbow flag, it told him he could not proceed. “We can confirm that the pastor has agreed not to move forward with these activities,” Anne Maselli, a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Chicago, told The Windy City Times. But despite the archdiocese’s request, Kalchik and some of his parishioners did move forward and burned the flag last Friday.

Kalchik, who has been with the church for 11 years, has been consistently anti-gay and clearly felt threatened by the presence of a rainbow flag. This one in particular had been hanging in Resurrection Parish since 1991 as a sign of respect to the local LGBTQ community. Kalchik’s insecurities drove him to destroy it even though Church leadership threatened to fire him.

“We [burned the flag] in a private way, a quiet way, so as not to bring the ire of the gay community down upon this parish,” Kalchik said in a lengthy interview Monday with NBC News. “It’s our full right to destroy it, and we did so privately because the archdiocese was breathing on our back.” “We put an end to a depiction of our Lord’s cross that was profane,” he added, noting the flag had a cross and a rainbow intertwined. To use the image of the cross as anything other than a “reminder of our Lord’s passion and death,” he said, “is what we consider a sacrilege.” Kalchik said that the archdiocese had told him not to burn the flag in front of the church, as planned. “So in a quiet way we took matters into our own hands and said a prayer of exorcism over this thing,” he said. “It was cut into seven pieces, so it was burned over stages in the same fire pit that we used for the Easter vigil mass.”

So Kalchik’s not just a bigot, but a coward, too.

He justified his hate by saying the rainbow flag was a “profane” way to honor Jesus, but someone whose response to a symbol of outreach is to destroy it has more than just disagreement on his mind. He even admitted that he thinks gay people should be killed.

When asked about his views toward homosexuality, Kalchik was unequivocal, saying he’s “quite literal” when it comes to what the Bible says in Leviticus, Corinthians and Ephesians. Leviticus 20:13, according to the King James Bible, states: “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: They shall surely be put to death.”

This person isn’t stable enough to run a mile, let alone a church. He is transparently bigoted, and he targets the most vulnerable people in our society. It’s not burning the flag itself that’s a problem because this isn’t about free speech. This is about the message Kalchik wants to send through his act of protest, which is one of pure hate and bigotry.

Is the Catholic Church in Chicago okay with that?

