BOSTON — Outraged Catholics are calling for a criminal investigation of a Boston hard-rock radio station that recently aired what it claimed were taped recordings from a local church confessional.
Rush-hour listeners to WAAF-FM (107.3) on Oct. 27 heard voices allegedly from the confidential sacrament of confession, in which parishioners share their sins with a priest and ask forgiveness.
Recordings of a child abuser, an adulteress and an addicted gambler crossed the airwaves before a series of angry calls prompted station management to pull shock jocks Tom Birdsley and Rocko off the air.
The independent Catholic Action League of Massachusetts has called on state Attorney General Thomas Reilly to investigate whether the station violated Catholic rights to religion and privacy.
“Violating the sanctity of the sacrament would impair Catholics in the free exercise of religion,” said League Executive Director C.J. Doyle. And if the recordings turn out to be authentic, he said, then the station also broke a Massachusetts law prohibiting eavesdropping.
WAAF Program Director David Douglas told The Boston Herald the tapes were not real but “fabricated” and “theater of the mind.” The Herald also reported that the disc jockeys have been saying privately that the tapes were real.
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