New York, NY – A Catholic elementary school principal with ties to a white supremacist publication has been fired, the New York Archdiocese said Tuesday.
Frank Borzellieri, who previously served as a high school English teacher, is the author of several books, including 2004’s Don’t Take It Personally: Race, Immigration Crime and Other Heresies, in which he declared diversity a “weakness,” according to the New York Daily News.
The New York Archdiocese launched an internal review after a published report detailed Borzellieri’s controversial views on multicultural education, Martin Luther King, Jr. literature and his efforts to remove an openly gay teacher and activist from a Queens public school.
WATCH AN INTERVIEW w/ FRANK BORZELLIERI from 2000:
[youtubevid http://youtube.com/watch?v=D4j9nqloDx8]
The Archdiocese’s statement said Borzellieri had been fired because “many of his opinions” were deemed “incompatible with the philosophy and practices of Our Lady of Mount Carmel School and with Catholic schools throughout the Archdiocese.”
A blog bearing Borzellieri’s name, describes his views as “a libertarian, Eurocentric, conservative perspective…blasting the hypocrisy of liberals and the cowardice of politically correct so-called conservatives.”
He was hired as principal in 2009 by Rev. Fr. Eric Rapaglia, who told the Daily News he was aware of Borzellieri’s views, but thought much of it was “valuable and logical and reasonable.”
Rapaglia has since changed his tune.
“I should not have hired Mr. Borzellieri,” he said in an e-mailed statement to theGrio’s Todd Johnson Tuesday afternoon. “I ask for [the community’s] forgiveness.”
Rapaglia, who also posted the statement on the school’s website, writes that he was not aware of Bozellieri’s political writings at the time of his hiring, though he did say he read them afterward.
Rapaglia said Borzellieri had previously “worked in two other minority-dominated schools before coming to Mount Carmel, and there was never any complaints from parents or students about him sent to the Archdiocese.”
Borzellieri served as a board member in a Queens school district from 1993-2002. During his tenure, he tried to ban multiculturalism and bilingual education. In 1995, he became involved with American Renaissance and began contributing articles.
Read more about Borzellieri’s firing here on NBC New York.
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