In the current issue of the BYTE, the San Bernardino diocesan news, a story is featured regarding the gay-themed HBO movie, Behind the Candelabra.  The movie is based upon the homosexual relationship of the young Scott Thorson and the aging Liberace.

The BYTE story (author unnamed) announces the role of the diocese with the movie and incredibly calls Liberace a “lifelong Catholic.”  The article begins with this  statement: “Art imitated life when a Hollywood film crew came to Our Lady of Solitude parish in Palm Springs to recreate the funeral Mass of….Liberace.”

Publisher’s Weekly describes Thorson’s book as a “sorry, seamy tale” of Thorson’s “callous eviction from the performer’s Las Vegas penthouse in favor of a teenager and the public brouhaha that followed when he filed a palimony suit.”

Thorson’s book is also described as “uncomfortably candid with revelations about `Lee’ (Liberace), who was driven to experience sexual variety with younger males…”

The BYTE story reveals that Father John Kavcak,MSC, pastor of Our Lady of Solitude, actually performs in the movie as  a “priest celebrating the funeral Mass.”  The entire story fails to state that this is a gay-themed movie and inaccurately portrays a funeral Mass with casket present for theatrical effect – in contradiction to the truth.

The salacious homosexual content of the book, and hence, the movie, did not stop Bishop Gerald Barnes from renting the church for two days so that a historically inaccurate scene could be made showing a funeral Mass with casket, furthering the falsehood that Liberace was somehow a practicing Catholic.  In fact, Liberace’s corpse never made it into any Catholic Church. There was only a commemorative Mass (without casket) to pray for Liberace’s soul and a fifteen-minute chapel service with casket at Forest Lawn in Hollywood.

In a September 23 news story in the San Bernardino Sun, the Diocese refused to disclose what kind of financial deal they had signed with producer, Jerry Weintraub, or HBO.

For further information, see the September 16 California Catholic Daily story:

https://cal-catholic.com/wordpress/2012/09/16/behind-the-candelabra/

And the San Bernardino diocese BYTE story:
https://icbyte.cloudaccess.net/news/parish-news/157-liberace-bio-films-at-palm-springs-parish.html