Suspended priest in Grenada turns to calypso to preach about sexual abuse and Gaza

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A suspended Catholic priest on a tiny Caribbean island is embracing calypso to make his voice heard on topics including Gaza and sexual abuse within the church.

Father Gerard Paul, who hails from Grenada, can no longer officiate masses, funerals, weddings or baptisms after repeatedly criticizing the church and clergy. But that hasn’t stopped him from preaching via the lilting rhythms of calypso, an Afro-Caribbean music genre known for its witty lyrics and satirical social commentary.

“It’s a kind of pulpit for me,” Paul told The Associated Press in a phone interview this week.

The 64-year-old priest made his debut this year at Spicemas, Grenada’s biggest soca and calypso carnival. Like many annual carnivals across the Caribbean, it celebrates rebellion against enslavement. Paul sang his way into the finals and is scheduled to compete as “Father Paul” against 10 other singers this weekend, including “Killa B” and “Sour Serpent.”

Paul joined the seminary 40 years ago and has been a priest for 32 years: “I was always concerned about the plight of the masses, so I saw the church as a vehicle for societal change.”

His first taste of calypso came in 1988, while he was still in the seminary in Trinidad and Tobago. The seminary held a calypso competition where Paul made his debut and placed second.

His priestly duties then dominated his life, but after he was suspended two years ago following a sermon criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza, Paul embraced calypso again. He has recorded two songs so far – “Oh Gaza” and “Ah Want Ah Radar.”

“I can’t quite say I miss the ritual,” he said, referring to being a priest. “Although I loved the ritual … there is a lot of limitation to it as well.”

He said that while he loved interacting with his congregation, being a calypso singer allows him to reach a wider audience.

“When you’re in a small world, you feel that’s the whole world,” Paul said. “As a much bigger world opens to you, you can’t go back.”

Singing as a form of social criticism

Paul is known for his song “Ah Want Ah Radar,” a riff on the U.S. government’s real-life request to install a radar at Grenada’s international airport last year as the U.S. military struck suspected drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean.

Paul sings about Grenada’s government dragging its feet on a decision, with the U.S. later installing a radar in neighboring Tobago.

In the song, Paul asks U.S. President Donald Trump for a radar of his own, which he said he would use to expose sexual abuse within the church.

“I’m begging the U.S., please,” Paul sings.

“We all know the Catholic faith say that priests must be celibate, but they love what they say they hate. And it’s just a cover-up from the level of the top,” he sings as part of explicit lyrics that reference clergy having sex with boys.

Sermon leads to suspension

Paul, who angered the church in recent years, was hit with an indefinite suspension in April 2024.

In footage shot and later deleted by Good News Catholic Communications, an arm of the Catholic Diocese of St. George’s in Grenada, Paul criticized Israel and accused it of committing genocide in Gaza – which Israel vehemently denies – during a March 2024 sermon in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in St. George’s.

Paul called on the pope, bishops and priests to speak up during his sermon, which was published on social media by The Bubb Report, a local weekly investigative journalism program.

“We cannot rightly ever preach the gospel if we do not stand for justice,” he said as some in the congregation applauded. He added: “When you stand in silence, when you sit in silence, you are part of the injustice.”

Then-Bishop Clyde Harvey criticized Paul’s sermon, calling it a “diatribe” and said he did not give the priest permission to say what he did.

“We can be proud to belong to a church which fails sometimes, but … is always standing up wherever it can for justice,” Harvey said.

On April 4, 2024, Paul was suspended indefinitely. In a statement, Harvey accused Paul of “persistent” attacks on the church and its leadership, saying his statements “have confused, harmed and scandalized many faith-filled persons. They have brought his fellow clergy into disrepute.”

Harvey wrote: “When Fr Paul said, ‘I have no regrets and I will do it again,’ he put himself beyond review and fraternal correction. No institution can survive when such attitudes and actions are adopted.”

On April 8, 2024, Harvey said in a video posted on social media that Paul was not suspended for his comments on Gaza, noting that such sentiments have echoed within and outside the Catholic Church. Rather, he was suspended for “his continuing lack of respect for the church of which he is a priest” and failure to “correct his errors,” Harvey said.

He added: “Father Paul has expressed his views in ways that seem to mock authority.”

Harvey stressed that the suspension is not a dismissal from priesthood.

Yet Paul remains suspended two years later.

The priest reached the upcoming finals by singing songs including, “Oh Gaza,” a biting commentary about the Israeli military offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 73,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, with Paul describing deaths “while Zion drums beat and missiles pound.”

“This is a time to make a voice for them,” he sings. “Cannot just pretend everything is fine, Gaza on me mind … When the Church would not take a stance, I go preach, I go preach.”

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Gibbs reported from Port-of-Spain, Trinidad.