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Angel Llavano is one cranky customer. He didn't like a sermon at his church, St. Thomas the Apostle in Crystal Lake, so he left a voice message for the priest saying, "I attended mass on Sunday and I have seen poor homilies, but yesterday broke all records." When the priest played that recording as part of the following week's sermon (snap!), Llavano decided to sue for defamation. Great, just when homilies were going multimedia, somebody has to ruin it for everyone. That's St. Thomas' pictured at the right, by the way; can you feel the aura of public humiliation? We cannot.
Llavano is suing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockford, Fr. Luis Alfredo Rios and Monsignor Daniel Hermes for more than $50,000. Following his outing as kind of a douche, Llavano had to change churches, and the suit says this ordeal qualifies as defamation, "intentional infliction of emotional distress and public disclosure of private facts." So broken was he by the public disclosure of these facts that he ... decided to sue so we can all know about it, as a matter of public record.
Image from St. Thomas' website.
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Isn't this just like that Seinfeld where Kathy Griffin plays all those mean messages from Jerry as a part of her stand-up?
Don't you have to actually SAY something to be guilty of defamation? Simply playing a recorded message without defaming commentary can't be defamation, right?
Otherwise, every criminal who had audio evidence against him could sue the State for defamation
Unless this "parishoiner" (paging James Koh!) has a career that hinges on whether or not he's critical of homilies, I fail to see what the damages are.
Maybe next week's sermon should be about turning the other cheek...
What matters is whether he is legally correct, not whether he is a douche. Frankly, in a country like England, his case would be even more legitimate.