The New York City priest who was disciplined last year for letting pop star Sabrina Carpenter film a racy music video inside his church is now being accused of mishandling nearly $2 million in parish funds.

Church officials announced this week that Monsignor Jamie Gigantiello has been stripped of more of his duties after an investigation uncovered a “pattern of serious violations of Diocesan policies and protocols” — including making unauthorized financial transfers to a former aide in Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, which is now under a federal corruption probe.

Gigantiello has been relieved of “any pastoral oversight or governance role” at the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Williamsburg, Bishop Robert Brennan said in a statement issued by the Roman Catholic diocese of Brooklyn and shared with NPR.

Brennan said Gigantiello had “mishandled substantial church funds and interfered with the administration of the Parish after being directed not to do so.” NPR has reached out to Gigantiello’s attorney for comment.

Brennan said he also relieved Deacon Dean Dobbins — who had served as the parish’s temporary administrator during the investigation — citing his use of “racist and other offensive language” during private conversations held in the church office. Those conversations were “apparently recorded at Monsignor Gigantiello’s direction” without the deacon’s consent, he added.

“It was wrong to secretly record Deacon Dobbins, but the use of such language by any church employee is unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” he added.

Brennan said he has appointed a new administrator “in order to safeguard the public trust, and to protect church funds.”

Here’s a look at the allegations against Gigantiello — and what any of this has to do with one of pop’s biggest hitmakers.

What triggered the investigation?

Like a lot of lore, it all started on Halloween. On Oct. 31, 2023, Carpenter released the music video for her song “Feather,” which takes place partially in a Brooklyn church.

To the tune of the upbeat song, it shows a series of incidents in which she either kills or witnesses the deaths of several men who behaved badly toward her. Carpenter drives a pink hearse to the church and, once inside, dances — wearing a short black tutu and veil — around the altar in front of several pastel-colored coffins.

The video certainly has its fans; It’s been viewed over 100 million times on YouTube. But it also ruffled many feathers (no pun intended).

Brennan, the Brooklyn bishop, told the Catholic News Agency at the time that he was “appalled” at what had been filmed at the church.

“The parish did not follow diocesan policy regarding the filming on Church property, which includes a review of the scenes and script,” the diocese said in a statement.

Days later, Gigantiello — who has served as the church’s pastor for nearly a decade — published a letter to parishioners apologizing for his role in “this shameful representation, which I whole-heatedly renounce.”

In it, he said the parish had been approached by a local film crew scouting locations for “what was presented as ‘a production featuring Sabrina Carpenter,’ ” and that he agreed to the filming “after a general search of the artists involved did not reveal anything questionable.” He said he was not present during the shoot.

“The parish staff and I were not aware that anything provocative was occurring in the church nor were we aware that faux coffins and other funeral items would be placed in the sanctuary,” Gigantiello wrote. “Most of the video was supposed to be filmed outside, near the church, which it was.”

Carpenter, for her part, said at the time that her team had gotten approval in advance, and quipped, “Jesus was a carpenter.” She wore a shirt with that phrase on it during her Coachella performance earlier this year.

As a result of the incident, Brennan removed Gigantiello as the diocese’s vicar for development — a fundraising position he had held for years — and relieved him from “all administrative and financial oversight.”

Brennan also initiated what he called “a broader administrative review of compliance with Diocesan policies and procedures.”

What did investigators find?

Monsignor Jamie Gigantiello, pictured in Brooklyn in 2022, lost his leadership roles in the church after an investigation found a pattern of wrongdoing, including making unauthorized financial transfers to a former top aide to New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

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Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

The review was conducted by a management consulting firm, Alvarez & Marsal, and a law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. Church officials say it revealed a pattern of wrongdoing, including financial mismanagement, by Gigantiello.

Most concerningly to officials, between 2019 and 2021 Gigantiello transferred a total of $1.9 million in parish funds to bank accounts and two companies affiliated with the law firm of Frank Carone — a close advisor to Mayor Eric Adams who served as his first chief of staff in 2022 (and now runs a lobbying firm and has previously said he will chair Adams’ reelection campaign).

“These transfers took the form of three apparent loans made by the Parish to those Carone-affiliated entities,” Brennan said.

He said Gigantiello did not inform Diocesan officials or seek the required approval for the transfers, nor did he properly document the transfers or “obtain necessary details from Mr. Carone about the use of these funds.”

NPR has reached out to a spokesperson for Carone.

Brennan said Gigantiello first transferred $1 million to Carone’s law firm in 2019, and that the firm repaid that amount along with approximately 9% interest between June 2020 and June 2021. Gigantiello made two more transfers worth $900,000 in August and November 2021 to companies affiliated with Carone, apparently “pursuant to notes providing one-year repayment terms at agreed interest rates.”

But he requested early repayment of the principal amounts in February 2022 “without requiring the payment to the Parish of the substantial interest provided for under the notes.”

Gigantiello told The City that he had approached Carone to see “if there were any investments I could make” for the parish, adding that “the investments were made legally and the investments came back.”

Brennan said the unauthorized loans weren’t the only issue uncovered.

“In addition, the Diocese’s review has identified other instances in which Monsignor Gigantiello used and transferred Parish funds in violation of Diocesan policies and protocols,” he said. “He also used a church credit card for substantial personal expenses. Those transactions remain under investigation.”

Separately, he said, the diocese received evidence earlier this month from Gigantiello’s lawyers of “racist and other offensive comments” made by Dobbins, the deacon who had been serving as temporary administrator since Gigantiello’s demotion.

The evidence included recordings of conversations in the parish office at Gigantiello’s direction, without the deacon’s “knowledge or consent and, in some instances, without the knowledge or consent of the other party to the conversation.”

What does this have to do with the Adams indictment?

Adams was indicted on federal charges of bribery, fraud and soliciting a political contribution from a foreign national in late September, becoming the first sitting New York City mayor to be charged with a federal crime.

Despite the resignation of many top administration officials — and calls for Adams to do the same — the mayor, who has pleaded not guilty, said he doesn’t plan to step down.

Several media outlets — including NBC 4 New York,The City, the New York Daily News and the National Catholic Reporter — reported that Gigantiello’s church received a subpoena from federal investigators earlier this year requesting information about business dealings between Gigantiello and Carone, describing them as longtime friends.

The two accompanied Adams on his visit to Rome earlier this year, where he met the Pope, according to those outlets.

The diocese says it “is fully committed to cooperating with law enforcement in all investigations.” It did not respond to NPR’s question about the subpoena.

It’s not clear to what extent the “Feather” music video debacle may have put Gigantiello’s church on investigators’ radar.

But Carpenter joked about her alleged role in Adams’ indictment days after it happened, while her Short n’ Sweet tour was playing New York City’s Madison Square Garden.

“Damn, what now?” the singer said onstage. “Should we talk about how I got the mayor indicted, or … ?

Heading into a second term, New Yorker editor David Remnick says Donald Trump’s anger “has been never so intense as it’s been against the press.” The president-elect has referred to the news media as the “Enemy of the American people,” has threatened retribution against outlets that have covered him negatively and has suggested that that NBC, CBS and ABC should have their licenses revoked.

Marty Baron, the former executive editor of the Washington Post, says he expects the incoming administration “to go after the press in every conceivable way … [using] every tool in the toolbox — and there are a lot of tools.”

“I think [Trump’s] salivating for the opportunity to prosecute and imprison journalists for leaks of national security information — or what they would call national security information,” Baron says. “I would expect that he would deny funding to public radio … and TV. And that he will seek to exercise control over the Voice of America and its parent company, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, as he did in his previous administration, trying to turn it into a propaganda outlet.”

Remnick sees parallels between Trump’s approach to the media and that of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Both men, he says, challenge traditional notions of the truth. “The Putin regime shows us when there is no truth, everything is possible,” Remnick says. “Lying has come from White Houses for decades and decades. But Donald Trump has changed the game.”

Baron adds that Trump’s target goes beyond the press: “The objective here is to suppress free expression by anyone. … So this is just the first step. And I think people should keep that in mind.”

Interview highlights

On the Washington Post‘s announcement in the weeks before the 2024 election that it would not be endorsing either presidential candidate

Baron: I don’t think there’s any great explanation for this decision 11 days before the election [other] than that [Post owner Jeff Bezos] was yielding to pressure from Donald Trump on his other interests, which are substantially larger than The Post, particularly Amazon, which has many contracts with the federal government, particularly in terms of cloud computing, and Blue Origin, a commercial space enterprise that is essentially wholly dependent upon the federal government for its contracts. …

If this had been a decision that was made three years ago, two years ago, a year ago, maybe even six months ago, I would say fine. It’s not that important to me whether news organizations like The Post make a presidential endorsement. Of course, people can make up their own minds. They don’t need The Post to help them. But I don’t think there’s any logical explanation for this decision other than “Don’t poke the bear.” And I think this was an effort to not poke the bear. And I think it was notably unsuccessful, because nobody can reasonably argue that trust in the Washington Post today is higher than it was prior to this decision. It is substantially lower. I’ve never seen a reputation for a company so severely damaged in such a short period of time. And I think it was a regrettable and deeply wrong decision on [Bezo’s] part.

On the pressure media outlets are facing

Remnick: If you look at the waning influence of what’s called the mainstream press, and if you look at statistics about trust in the press and the ecology of the press, the combination of economic pressures combined with Trump’s pressures has been of immense concern to all of us who were involved in this activity. … These pressures are immense. And Trump knows it. And he knows how it’s affected his political fortunes in the most positive way.

Baron: When [Trump] talks about his triumphs during his first term, he’s cited the undermining confidence in the mainstream press — he’s called it one of his greatest successes. … It’s not the only reason the confidence in the press has declined. There are a variety of reasons. … But the big factors have been market fragmentation and the fact that people can find any site that affirms their preexisting point of view and any conspiracy theory, no matter how crazy it is, they can find somebody who says that’s true.

On the media’s responsibility in losing the trust of the people 

Baron: I don’t think that we’ve accurately and adequately reflected the concerns of a lot of Americans in this country. I’ve often been asked whether we had failures in our coverage of Donald Trump in 2015 and 2016. And I say that the greatest failure came well before that in that we did not anticipate that this country could produce a candidate like Donald Trump. We did not understand the level of grievance and anger toward the so-called elites, including and maybe especially the press — although if you look at the salaries of most journalists, they don’t qualify as elite. And so I think we didn’t really do a good enough job of getting out in the country and really understanding the concerns of ordinary Americans. …

I’m concerned that a portion of the journalistic community, if you can call it that, have engaged in what I would consider to be advocacy and activism of a sort. That’s not true of everybody by any means, not even true of the majority of the journalists. But there’s a segment out there that believes in that. And I think that that has hurt us. And we should aim to be an independent arbiter of the facts, try to put them in context in an effort to get at the truth over time. And we should be more focused on the kinds of questions we want to ask and trying to get answers to those questions than thinking that we have the answers to those questions before we embark on reporting. Otherwise, the so-called reporting is merely an exercise in confirmation bias.

On how the collapse of local news contributed to polarized media

Remnick: There are all kinds of news deserts all over the country that have been created by this new news ecology, so that small newspapers and medium-sized newspapers have either shriveled to the point of disappearance or they’ve closed their doors completely. Newsrooms across the river here in New Jersey, for example, that used to have a couple hundred people in them have a couple dozen, at best. They’re hanging on by their fingernails. If that had been replaced by websites with equally aggressive, or even better, news gatherers, of reporters and editors, that would be one thing, but they haven’t.

Baron: Many people in communities, they’ve never even seen a reporter. They’ve never met a reporter. Their impressions of what journalists are is formed by arguments that they see on cable news, partisan arguments, what they see on cable news. And that is really unfortunate, because that is not the way that most journalists carry themselves.

On the American public not being able to agree on facts

Baron: The sad reality today is that we as a society do not share a common set of facts. But it’s actually a lot worse than that. We cannot even agree on what a fact is on how to determine a fact, because all of the elements that we have used in the past to determine what a fact is have been devalued, dismissed, denigrated, denied. All of that things like education, expertise, actual experience, and above all, evidence. …

So the idea here is to obliterate the idea that there is some truth, independent truth that can be determined by independent arbiters of truth, whether it be not just journalists, but the courts as well, or anybody else, and that the only truth, at least in Trump’s mind, is the one that comes out of his own mouth.

 
On what traditional media can learn from social media influencers 

Baron: We have to be better communicators. We have to recognize that the way that people are receiving information today is radically different from the way that we received information when we were growing up and the way we maybe prefer to receive information today. So we have a lot to learn from influencers, actually, in terms of how to do that. Our authority is not just being questioned today, but our authenticity is being questioned today. And these influencers are coming across as much more authentic and therefore people think they’re more authoritative.

Monique Nazareth and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.