A California pastor who celebrated the
deaths of 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando is being asked to
move his church.
According to ABC
affiliate WMAZ, Harsch Investment Properties, which owns the
building where Verity Baptist Church is located, has asked pastor
Roger Jimenez to move and has said that it will not renew the
church's lease.
In the wake of the Orlando shooting,
Jimenez praised the gunman for killing “50 pedophiles.” (Early
reports were that 50 people died in the shooting.)
“Are you sad that 50 pedophiles were
killed today?” he rhetorically asked his congregation. “I think
Orlando, Florida is a little safer tonight. The tragedy is that more
of them didn't die. The tragedy is I'm kind of upset he didn't
finish the job.”
Harsch Investment Properties said in a
press release that it would not tolerate “tenants who advocate
hatred and the taking of innocent lives.”
Jimenez is not the only pastor who cheered
the killer, pastor
Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona
also applauded the mass shooting in Orlando.