Voris, who has built a reputation as an anti-LGBTQ crusader, also claims to have abandoned homosexuality. He revealed in 2016 that for most of his 30s he “lived a life of live-in relationships with homosexual men,” but has since reverted back to Catholicism and now “abhor(s) all these sins.”
Both men often tie the Catholic sexual abuse crisis to homosexuality. Yiannopoulos, even before abandoning his gay identity, spoke publicly about being a survivor of sexual abuse by a priest. (A 2011 John Jay College of Criminal Justice report concluded that claims that homosexuality fueled the sex abuse crisis are not borne out by statistical evidence.)
Yiannopoulos began regularly appearing on the Church Militant website and in 2021 emceed a protest the group staged outside a gathering of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore. Voris said he has also served as Yiannopoulos’ occasional spiritual adviser.
“I just give him further instruction in the faith,” Voris told RNS in April. The two had another session slotted for later that month, he said, when Voris planned spend “three or four hours” at his house schooling Milo on Catholic sacramental theology.
Voris and Church Militant distanced themselves from Yiannopoulos on Monday, tweeting out a statement saying he “has never been an employee of Church Militant.” The statement acknowledged Yiannopoulos’ early work for the website but added ”since then (and unrelated to us) Milo has re-entered the world of political activism of which we have no comment.”
Yiannopoulos has also forged a relationship with Fuentes, who founded America First — an advocacy group and media enterprise — after dropping out of Boston University at age 18. Fuentes, now 24, traffics in memes celebrating Christian nationalism, often linking it to Catholicism.
During a livestream in June, Fuentes advocated for “Catholic Taliban rule in America,” explaining that such a regime would ban same-sex marriage and contraception. His followers, known as Groypers, were a consistent presence at anti-vaccine and anti-abortion rallies in 2021, often holding aloft crucifixes and chanting “Christ is king!”
People wearing America First-branded gear were also among those who stormed the U.S. Capitol and entered the U.S. Senate chamber, although there is no evidence Fuentes was part of the riot himself.
Aside from the Yiannopoulos connection, Church Militant has begun to echo Fuentes’ rhetoric. Earlier this year, Voris published a video in which he referred to young people who “style themselves as an America first approach,” arguing they should ultimately put “faith first” because doing so will allow “everything else” to fall into place. Another video directed at “young Catholics with an eye to political battle” railed against Protestantism, declaring that “’Christ is king’ must ring loud across the land, and that means Catholic truth must be embraced.”
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Voris’ approach to Christian nationalism appears to differ from Fuentes’, however. In a recent interview, he argued that the U.S. shouldn’t be ruled by one Christian sect, but that laws should be rooted in “Christian principle … because what’s the alternative?”
