Local

Gay man says priest refused to give last rites

Incident at Washington Hospital Center angers LGBT Catholic group

Published

12 years ago

February 17, 2014

A Roman Catholic priest working as a chaplain at D.C.’s Washington Hospital Center refused to give last rites and communion to a heart attack patient earlier this month after the patient told him he’s gay and believes Pope Francis is sympathetic to gay people, the patient told the Blade.

D.C. resident Ronald Plishka, 63, a retired travel agent and lifelong Catholic, said he asked a nurse to arrange for a priest to see him on Feb. 7, one day after he was admitted by ambulance to the hospital emergency room for a heart attack. He said that at the time he wasn’t sure he would survive.

A short time later, Plishka said, Father Brian Coelho, a priest assigned to the hospital’s Department of Spiritual Care, arrived at his bedside. He said Coelho offered to take his confession before proceeding with communion and last rites, which the church now calls the sacrament of anointing of the sick.

“We started talking and I told him I was so happy with this new Pope because of his comments about the gays and his accepting the gays,” Plishka said. “And I mentioned that I was gay. I said it and then I asked him does that bother you? And he said, ‘Oh, no, that does not bother me,’” said Plishka.

“But then he would not proceed with administering the last rites or communion. He couldn’t do it.”

According to Plishka, Coelho, who brought a supply of holy water to his hospital room, never said in so many words that he was refusing to administer communion and last rites.

Asked what Coelho told him, Plishka said, “Well, I mean he stopped. He would not do it. By him not doing it I assumed he would not do it because why was he getting ready to do it and all of a sudden when I say I’m gay he stops?”

Plishka said Coelho gave no reason for not giving him the sacraments he requested but offered instead to pray with him.

“He said what he wanted to do,” said Plishka. “He wanted to pray. That’s what he wanted to do. He said well I could pray with you. And I just told him to get the fuck out of here — excuse me. But that’s what I told him.”

The patient with whom he shared the hospital room overheard some of what was said and asked him, “What in the name of God happened?,” Plishka said.

“And then the doctors came in and told me to calm down or I’m going to have another heart attack,” he said.

Coelho, whose photo appears in the Washington Hospital Center’s online staff directory of hospital chaplains, did not return a call from the Blade seeking comment on his interaction with Plishka.

So Young Pak, Washington Hospital Center’s director of media relations, said the Archdiocese of Washington assigned Coelho to serve as a Catholic chaplain at the hospital. She said the hospital did not hire Coelho.

Pak released a statement to the Blade saying the hospital cannot comment on the specifics of the interaction between Coelho and Plishka “because we were not a party to it.”

But her statement says the hospital is taking “our patient’s concerns very seriously.” She said the Human Rights Campaign Foundation recognized Washington Hospital Center last year as a “Leader in LGBT Healthcare Equality.”

“We want to hold true to this important commitment to the LGBT community and to all of our patients,” she said. “It is our expectation that all who offer spiritual care to patients in our hospital adhere to our values and extend excellent care, both physical and spiritual, to all patients regardless of their faith traditions,” she said.

Pak added, “Our Department of Spiritual Care will reinforce our expectations with this priest and his superiors.”

Plishka said the treatment he received from the hospital itself was “excellent” and praised the hospital and its doctors for saving his life.

Chieko Noguchi, a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Washington, which has jurisdiction over D.C. area priests working as hospital chaplains, said her office would have no comment at this time.

A June 2010 biography of Coelho published on the Archdiocese website says Coelho was appointed at that time as parochial vicar at St. Mary Parish in Landover Hills, Md. It says he was “born in India and attended seminary there prior to entering the Archdiocese of Washington’s Redemptoris Mater Seminary.”

The biography says he was ordained on May 26, 2007 and served as a parochial victor at St. Mary of the Mills in Laurel, Md., and at St. Elizabeth Parish in Rockville, Md., in previous assignment.

Pak said Coelho began his tenure as chaplain at Washington Hospital Center in October 2013.

Officials with the LGBT Catholic organizations Dignity U.S.A. and Dignity Washington expressed disbelief that a priest would refuse to offer last rites and communion to a patient in need.

“This is just abhorrent and not Christ-like at all,” said Dignity Washington President Daniel Barutta. “I can’t imagine where that priest is coming from.”

Henry Huot, a retired Catholic priest who serves as chair of Dignity Washington’s Pastoral Ministry Committee, said longstanding Catholic practice calls for priests to provide the sacraments to people in situations similar to Plishka.

“Any baptized Christian ought not to be denied the sacraments at his or her request,” Huot said. “And that is a cardinal rule of pastoral care. So I don’t know what was going through the mind of this hospital chaplain to deny this man the sacraments,” he said. “It violates this cardinal rule.”

Huot and other Dignity officials, including a priest who asked not to be identified, said no church rule or policy says sacraments should be withheld to people because of their sexual orientation.

“The fact that conditions existed for a priest to make this call is upsetting,” said Dignity USA President Marianne Duddy-Burke. “There should be very clear standards. You minister to the person in need without judgment and without conditions,” she said. “It is not the role of the priest to cause the person in distress additional hardship.”

Duddy-Burke said it’s the responsibility of the Archdiocese to set pastoral care standards for priests under its jurisdiction.

“And I would hope that if this case is brought to the attention of Archdiocesan officials, as it should be, that they would respond appropriately and discipline this priest and make it known to every priest and every person that’s providing pastoral care in the Archdiocese that people should be treated as children of God first.”

Barutta said the group’s pastoral committee headed by Huot has a list of priests on call to provide pastoral care for people in situations similar to Plishka.

“Can you imagine Pope Francis being at that hospital?” Barutta said. “He would be siting by the bedside and be with this guy for more than an hour. I’m almost positive of that.”

Plishka said he is thankful that, unlike his encounter with the priest, his medical treatment at the Washington Hospital Center worked out well. In what he called state of the art cardiac procedures, he said doctors implanted stents through a catheter to reopen clogged arteries in his heart. Much to his surprise, the hospital discharged him just three days after he was admitted, with instructions that he adhere to several weeks of rest and outpatient treatment.

Once at home, Plishka said he called the hospital chaplain’s office to lodge a complaint against Fr. Coelho. He said he also called the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception next to Catholic University, where he has attended Mass nearly every Sunday for years.

“They have a priest on call,” he said. “So he called me back and said he agreed with what the priest at the hospital did. He said unless you’re willing to change and basically become somebody you’re not, then this priest had every right to do that, to refuse you communion and to refuse you the last rites of the church,” Plishka said.

He said he doesn’t recall the priest’s name but recalls the priest saying he was the one assigned to take calls from members of the community on that day — Feb. 8.

Ironically, Plishka said, a minister from another denomination came to his hospital room and gave him the spiritual support he didn’t receive from Fr. Coelho. In response to a call to the hospital by one of his friends, who Plishka had told of his encounter with Coelho, the hospital sent a Methodist minister to see him in his hospital room shortly after Coelho’s visit.

“He prayed with me and gave me communion and all of that,” said Plishka. “But it’s not the same. It’s not my religion, you know? I’ve been a Catholic all my life and for them to refuse me a sacrament and to refuse me communion? It destroyed me.”

Now, Plishka said, he decided to speak out about his experience with the hope that it might make a difference.

“I think there comes a time when as a gay man you have to take a stand, you know? It’s just intolerable to be treated like you’re nothing. And I could have died. And all I did was ask for the rites of the church that are due to me. But because I’m gay I’m denied that.”

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District of Columbia

D.C. police arrest man for burglary at gay bar Spark Social House

Suspect ID’d from images captured by Spark Social House security cameras

Published

3 days ago

February 21, 2026

Lou Chibbaro Jr.

Spark Social House (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

D.C. police on Feb. 18 arrested a 63-year-old man “of no fixed address” for allegedly stealing cash from the registers at the gay bar Spark Social House after unlawfully entering the bar at 2009 14th St., N.W., around 12:04 a.m. after it had closed for business, according to a police incident report.

“Later that day officers canvassing for the suspect located him nearby,” a separate police statement says. “63-year-old Tony Jones of no fixed address was arrested and charged with Burglary II,” the statement says.

The police incident report states that the bar’s owner, Nick Tsusaki, told police investigators that the bar’s security cameras captured the image of a man who has frequently visited the bar and was believed to be homeless.

“Once inside, the defendant was observed via the establishment’s security cameras opening the cash register, removing U.S. currency, and placing the currency into the left front pocket of his jacket,” the report says.

Tsusaki told the Washington Blade that he and Spark’s employees have allowed Jones to enter the bar many times since it opened last year to use the bathroom in a gesture of compassion knowing he was homeless. Tsusaki said he is not aware of Jones ever having purchased anything during his visits.

According to Tsusaki, Spark closed for business at around 10:30 p.m. on the night of the incident at which time an employee did not properly lock the front entrance door. He said no employees or customers were present when the security cameras show Jones entering Spark through the front door around 12:04 a.m.

Tsusaki said the security camera images show Jones had been inside Spark for about three hours on the night of the burglary and show him taking cash out of two cash registers. He took a total of $300, Tsusaki said.

When Tsusaki and Spark employees arrived at the bar later in the day and discovered the cash was missing from the registers they immediately called police, Tsusaki told the Blade. Knowing that Jones often hung out along the 2000 block of 14th Street where Spark is located, Tsusaki said he went outside to look for him and saw him across the street and pointed Jones out to police, who then placed him under arrest.

A police arrest affidavit filed in court states that at the time they arrested him police found the stolen cash inside the pocket of the jacket Jones was wearing. It says after taking him into police custody officers found a powdered substance in a Ziploc bag also in Jones’s possession that tested positive for cocaine, resulting in him being charged with cocaine possession in addition to the burglary charge.

D.C. Superior Court records show a judge ordered Jones held in preventive detention at a Feb. 19 presentment hearing. The judge then scheduled a preliminary hearing for the case on Feb. 20, the outcome of which couldn’t immediately be obtained.

District of Columbia

Judge rescinds order against activist in Capital Pride lawsuit

Darren Pasha accused of stalking organization staff, board members, volunteers

Published

4 days ago

February 20, 2026

Lou Chibbaro Jr.

Darren Pasha (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

A D.C. Superior Court judge on Feb.18 agreed to rescind his earlier ruling declaring local gay activist Darren Pasha in default for failing to attend a virtual court hearing regarding an anti-stalking lawsuit brought against him by the Capital Pride Alliance, the group that organizes D.C.’s annual Pride events.

The Capital Pride lawsuit, initially filed on Oct. 27, 2025, accuses Pasha of engaging in a year-long “course of conduct” of “harassment, intimidation, threats, manipulation, and coercive behavior” targeting Capital Pride staff, board members, and volunteers.

In his own court filings without retaining an attorney, Pasha has strongly denied the stalking related allegations against him, saying “no credible or admissible evidence has been provided” to show he engaged in any wrongdoing.

Judge Robert D. Okum nevertheless on Feb. 6 approved a temporary stay-away order requiring Pasha to stay at least 100 feet away from Capital Pride’s staff, volunteers, and board members until the time of a follow-up court hearing scheduled for April 17. He reduced the stay-away distance from 200 yards as requested by Capital Pride.

In his two-page order issued on Feb. 18, Okun stated that Pasha explained that he was involved in a scooter accident in which he was injured and his phone was damaged, preventing him from joining the Feb. 6 court hearing.

“Therefore, the court finds there is a good cause for vacating the default,” Okun states in his order.

At the time he initially approved the default order at the Feb. 6 hearing that Pasha didn’t attend, Okun scheduled an April 17 ex parte proof hearing in which Capital Pride could have requested a ruling in its favor seeking a permanent anti-stalking order against Pasha.

In his Feb. 18 ruling rescinding the default order Okun changed the April 17 ex parte proof hearing to an initial scheduling conference hearing in which a decision on the outcome of the case is not likely to happen.

In addition, he agreed to consider Pasha’s call for a jury trial and gave Capital Pride 14 days to contest that request. The Capital Pride lawsuit initially called for a non-jury trial by judge.

One request by Pasha that Okum denied was a call for him to order Capital Pride to stop its staff or volunteers from posting information about the lawsuit on social media. Pasha has said the D.C.-based online blog called DC Homos, which Pasha claims is operated by someone associated with Capital Pride, has been posting articles portraying him in a negative light and subjecting him to highly negative publicity.

“The defendant has not set forth a sufficient basis for the court to restrict the plaintiff’s social media postings, and the court therefore will deny the defendant’s request in his social media praecipe,” Okun states in his order.

A praecipe is a formal written document requesting action by a court.

Pasha called the order a positive development in his favor. He said he plans to file another motion with more information about what he calls the unfair and defamatory reports about him related to the lawsuit by DC Homos, with a call for the judge to reverse his decision not to order Capital Pride to stop social media postings about the lawsuit.

Pasha points to a video interview on the LGBTQ Team Rayceen broadcast, a link to which he sent to the Washington Blade, in which DC Homos operator Jose Romero acknowledged his association with Capital Pride Alliance.

Capital Pride Executive Director Ryan Bos didn’t immediately respond to a message from the Blade asking whether Romero was a volunteer or employee with Capital Pride.

Pasha also said he believes the latest order has the effect of rescinding the temporary stay away order against him approved by Okun in his earlier ruling, even though Okun makes no mention of the stay away order in his latest ruling. Capital Pride attorney Nick Harrison told the Blade the stay away order “remains in full force and effect.”

Harrison said Capital Pride has no further comment on the lawsuit.

District of Columbia

Trans activists arrested outside HHS headquarters in D.C.

Protesters demonstrated directive against gender-affirming care

Published

4 days ago

February 20, 2026

Joe Reberkenny

(Photo by Alexa B. Wilkinson)

Authorities on Tuesday arrested 24 activists outside the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services headquarters in D.C.

The Gender Liberation Movement, a national organization that uses direct action, media engagement, and policy advocacy to defend bodily autonomy and self-determination, organized the protest in which more than 50 activists participated. Organizers said the action was a response to changes in federal policy mandated by Executive Order 14187, titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”

The order directs federal agencies and programs to work toward “significantly limiting youth access to gender-affirming care nationwide,” according to KFF, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that provides independent, fact-based information on national health issues. The executive order also includes claims about gender-affirming care and transgender youth that critics have described as misinformation.

Members of ACT UP NY and ACT UP Pittsburgh also participated in the demonstration, which took place on the final day of the public comment period for proposed federal rules that would restrict access to gender-affirming care.

Demonstrators blocked the building’s main entrance, holding a banner reading “HANDS OFF OUR ‘MONES,” while chanting, “HHS—RFK—TRANS YOUTH ARE NO DEBATE” and “NO HATE—NO FEAR—TRANS YOUTH ARE WELCOME HERE.”

“We want trans youth and their loving families to know that we see them, we cherish them, and we won’t let these attacks go on without a fight,” said GLM co-founder Raquel Willis. “We also want all Americans to understand that Trump, RFK, and their HHS won’t stop at trying to block care for trans youth — they’re coming for trans adults, for those who need treatment from insulin to SSRIs, and all those already failed by a broken health insurance system.”

“It is shameful and intentional that this administration is pitting communities against one another by weaponizing Medicaid funding to strip care from trans youth. This has nothing to do with protecting health and everything to do with political distraction,” added GLM co-founder Eliel Cruz. “They are targeting young people to deflect from their failure to deliver for working families across the country. Instead of restricting care, we should be expanding it. Healthcare is a human right, and it must be accessible to every person — without cost or exception.”

Despite HHS’s efforts to restrict gender-affirming care for trans youth, major medical associations — including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Endocrine Society — continue to regard such care as evidence-based treatment. Gender-affirming care can include psychotherapy, social support, and, when clinically appropriate, puberty blockers and hormone therapy.

The protest comes amid broader shifts in access to care nationwide.

NYU Langone Health recently announced it will stop providing transition-related medical care to minors and will no longer accept new patients into its Transgender Youth Health Program following President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order targeting trans healthcare.