outed as gay because his Grindr data suggested he was visiting gay venues is now suing the gay hookup app for violating his privacy.Starting in 2016, Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, a priest from Wisconsin, served as the former general secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which serves as the Roman Catholic Church’s official mouthpiece in the United States, and frequently rails against laws and policies that recognize the rights of LGBTQ people.But in 2021, Burrill resigned from his position within the church after The Pillar, a right-wing Catholic activist website, claimed to have uncovered mobile app data showing that he had not only used the Grindr app but had visited a gay bar and multiple bathhouses.The Pillar did not say where or how it had obtained this data, saying the information on Burrill’s alleged whereabouts was based on “commercially available records of app signal data.”While the data didn’t include names or pictures of users, Grindr assigns a unique number to each phone and tracks timestamped location data based on GPS signals.
