Concluding that his alma mater “takes pride in insulting the Church and offending the faithful,” William Peter Blatty, author of the best-selling book, The Exorcist, filed a Canon Law petition with the Vatican earlier this week asking that Georgetown University be denied the right to call itself Catholic. Calling Georgetown a “Potemkin Village,” Blatty complained that “at alumni dinners, they will make sure there is a Jesuit in a collar at every table, like the floral arrangement.” For Blatty, Georgetown is the “leader of a pack of schools that are failing to live up to their Catholic identity.”
Mr. Blatty’s 200 page papal petition contains more than 480 footnotes, 99 appendices, 124 witness statements. It also includes a commissioned 120 page institutional audit of Georgetown. According to Manuel A. Miranda, who serves as Mr. Blatty’s counsel, “We have documented 23 years of scandals and dissidence—more than 100 scandals in the most recent years alone.”
The petition—with the signatures of more than 2,000 Catholics—asks Pope Francis to require that Georgetown implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the 1990 papal document requiring all Catholic colleges to teach “in communion” with the Church. The goal of Blatty’s petition is to revoke Georgetown’s right to call itself Catholic--unless it complies with Church teachings. (
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