An Illinois priest who failed to turn the other cheek after a parishioner criticized him now has to defend a “wrongful sermon” lawsuit for inviting the congregation to send his critic “to hell or another parish.”

Father Luis Alfredo Rios apparently forgot Jesus's message of nonretaliation in the Sermon from the Mount after parishioner Angel Llavona complained about the quality of his sermonizing. “I attended Mass on Sunday and I have seen poor homilies, but yesterday broke all records,” Llavona said in one of two messages left on Rios's voice mail.

Llavona, a high-school teacher, was in the congregation the following Sunday when Rios performed the Mass at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Crystal Lake, Ill., and gave him something else to complain about.

“During the Mass, Rios said, 'I have a talked to a lawyer and he said this was OK,'” Llavona says in a complaint filed last week in McHenry County Circuit Court. The priest then allegedly played the two voice mails to the congregation, commenting,

This is the person in charge of religious education here last year. That's why it is no surprise to me we had the kind of religious education we had. That's why we didn't get altar boys. What should we do, should we send him to hell or to another parish?

The suit seeks at least $50,000 in damages for breach of fiduciary duty, defamation and public disclosure of private facts. “Rios impugned Llavona's reputation as a teacher and as a good Catholic before his fellow parishioners,” it alleges.

The First Amendment precludes judges from inquiring into religious doctrine or belief and only a few courts have addressed "wrongful sermon" cases.

Allowing defamation and privacy claims to proceed against a Baptist clergyman, the Missouri Court of Appeals said in Hester v. Barnett, 723 S.W.2d 544 (1987), that

The use of the pulpit as the pretext for the practice of religion, but as the occasion for intentional defamation [ ] is neither justified by privilege nor protected by the free exercise clause.

In McNair v. Worldwide Church of God, 197 Cal.App.3d 363 (1987), a California appeals court found the plaintiff could “recover damages for defamatory remarks made during the course of a doctrinal explanation by a duly authorized minister” by meeting the heightened test of malice applied to public figure libel cases.

Unlike the defendant in Hester, however, Rios never accused Llavona of committing a crime. And as a New Mexico judge suggested in 2004 -- when he rejected a claim against a priest who denounced the deceased at a funeral -- threats of hellfire should not be unduly distressing to the devout.

“For thousands of years, churches have been making judgments against people,” the judge said. “Dante's Inferno has been talking about sending people to hell for many a year. People aren't shocked by it.”

By Matthew Heller
10/7/07