Sacramento Bishop Jaime Soto issued a canonical warning on June 1, 2026, to retired Deacon David Leatherby Jr. of his diocese. In the decree, the bishop said he had been informed that Deacon Leatherby was cooperating with illicit Masses celebrated in nearby Placer County by his son, Jeremy Leatherby — excommunicated for schism in August 2020 and returned to the lay state later that year — and urged the deacon to stop. Soto warned that if the deacon continued, the bishop would begin a formal process that could lead to “the imposition of just canonical penalties, including removal from the clerical state.”

Deacon Leatherby sent his reply on August 22, 2026, rejecting the legitimacy of Pope Leo XIV and Soto’s authority. “Since you recognize Leo as your pope,” he wrote, “I cannot in good conscience place myself under your spiritual authority.”

Two days later, he emailed Soto’s decree, his reply, and a 17-page document entitled “An Explanation of the Times We Live In” to his mailing list.

In the document, Deacon Leatherby lays out an apocalyptic and conspiratorial vision of the present state of the Catholic Church and the world. He claims that the Church is experiencing the “Great Apostasy” foretold in Scripture, paralleling Christ’s Passion, and repeatedly describes the Church led by Pope Leo as a “false church” under Satan’s control. Deacon Leatherby’s narrative is rooted in alleged private revelations, lengthy quotes from purported Marian messages, and a series of claims about widespread corruption and immorality in the hierarchy.

Together, the documents offer a view of what has taken shape in the six years since Jeremy Leatherby was laicized and withdrew from public view: a congregation and deliverance ministry preparing for the end times, convinced that the visible Church has been replaced with an evil counterfeit. Two self-published books help explain the beliefs sustaining it.

A Scandal in Sacramento

Ordained in 2006 after studying at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, Jeremy Leatherby built up a large following in the decade that followed. He was pastor of Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish in Sacramento, came from one of the region’s best-known Catholic families — the Leatherbys own the Leatherby’s Family Creamery ice cream parlors — and led a popular healing and deliverance ministry that attracted Catholics throughout the region.

But in March 2016, Soto removed him from active ministry and placed him on administrative leave. The diocese had received an allegation that Jeremy had violated ministerial boundaries with an adult woman.

Many parishioners and members of the Leatherby family rejected that explanation, and they began a four-year campaign to return him to parish ministry. As Where Peter Is (WPI) reported in August 2020, Church Militant ran several articles after his removal presenting his side of the story. An organization called “St. Joseph’s Battalion” took up his cause, labeling him “the Dry Martyr of Sacramento” and posting dozens of videos on YouTube calling for his restoration and for supporters to “take back the Diocese of Sacramento.” A petition to reinstate him gathered hundreds of signatures. Protesters regularly gathered outside the chancery, among them Jeremy’s grandfather, the late David Leatherby Sr., founder of the creamery.

In August 2018, journalist Katy Grimes offered an alternative narrative in an article and a follow-up: Jeremy’s removal from ministry was retaliation for his father, Deacon David Leatherby Jr., reporting alleged sexual misconduct by other priests. Church Militant also reported a version of this account. In 2020, the Diocese of Sacramento denied that Jeremy’s removal was retaliation, telling Catholic News Agency that the claim was “not true.”

The long delay between Jeremy’s removal and a final decision regarding his status became central to the campaign to defend him. In a 2018 letter to priests, the diocese’s vicar general wrote that assembling an independent panel had taken “longer than we would have liked.”

After public Masses were suspended in March 2020 due to COVID-19, Jeremy began celebrating Mass in private, despite the restrictions on his ministry. His following in 2020 was estimated at roughly 350 people. He also began saying Pope Benedict’s name in the Eucharistic Prayer rather than Francis’s, on the theory that Benedict’s 2013 resignation was invalid, and he omitted Soto’s name from the Eucharistic Prayer as well.

In an August 6, 2020, statement, while still suspended, Jeremy justified his unauthorized ministry by arguing that the pandemic constituted a “state of emergency” in which even laicized priests could be morally obliged to administer the sacraments. He also suggested that Francis might be the head of a “counter church,” invoking warnings he attributed to Fulton Sheen, John Paul II, and Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the now-excommunicated former papal nuncio to the United States.

Bishop Soto issued a warning to Jeremy Leatherby on August 3, 2020. Then, on August 7, the diocese announced that he had incurred automatic excommunication for schism — his break with the pope and the Church in communion with him. That declaration was separate from the unresolved misconduct case. His supporters treated it as further proof of persecution.

Reporting that month also described a video message — sent, Jeremy said, to the wrong contact after he had been drinking — in which he called a woman “baby doll” and “my girl” and told her repeatedly that he loved her.

The Catholic Herald published an interview with a woman who accused Jeremy of abuse; Where Peter Is summarized her account at the time. She described ritualized encounters she called the “Mary Magdalen Routine.” She said he cut off her hair to mark her vow of obedience to him as a priest. Jeremy admitted boundary violations but denied sexual contact with her.

The National Catholic Reporter and other outlets published additional accounts. A former parishioner told Catholic News Agency that Jeremy used women’s loyalty to him as their spiritual director to manipulate and abuse them.

On September 10, 2020, Pope Francis granted Jeremy’s request to return to the lay state, made in August; the decision was publicly announced that November. Catholic News Agency reported that the canonical case ended without a verdict. Soto wrote to the diocese that he had moral certitude that Jeremy had engaged in conduct against the sixth commandment with multiple women under the auspices of spiritual direction, and called for a diocesan day of fasting and reparation.

The Bishop’s Warning to Deacon Leatherby

Soto’s short, notarized decree records that the diocese granted Deacon Leatherby’s retirement “with no ministerial faculties” on May 10, 2021. In it, Soto states that he has been informed that the deacon is cooperating with his son’s illicit Masses in Placer County, immediately northeast of Sacramento. Retirement did not remove Deacon Leatherby from the clerical state. Soto cites canon 209, the obligation to remain in communion with the Church, and canon 273, the obligation of clerics to obey the pope and their bishop.

“I urge you to desist from this defiant practice,” he writes. “Repent of this sinful and scandalous conduct. You are offending the Lord Jesus and wounding His Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. You are leading other men and women in error, depriving them of the mercy and grace of Holy Mother Church.” The decree forbids Deacon Leatherby from any ministerial activity that “undermines the Catholic communion with the Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV,” and Soto closes by encouraging him toward “a life reconciled to the Roman Pontiff” and assuring him of his “abiding fraternal regard.”

The Deacon’s Response

Deacon Leatherby’s reply, dated August 22, is addressed to Soto but written, he says explicitly, “not only to you, but also for anyone who may eventually encounter your spurious accusations.”

The reply does not address whether Deacon Leatherby is assisting at his laicized son’s Masses, but returns to the circumstances of his 2021 retirement. The deacon wrote that Soto “abruptly and without canonical process” removed his faculties and struck his name from the diocesan directory of retired clergy, “as if my 10+ years of service in the diocese counted for nothing.” Deacon Leatherby calls the bishop’s professed “abiding fraternal regard” “simply a lie.” A bishop who meant it, he argues, would have picked up the phone. “I believe they reveal who you are, a wolf in shepherd’s clothing.”

Deacon Leatherby goes on to accuse Soto and “other corrupt men in the hierarchy” of denying perennial doctrine, “embracing the homosexual lifestyle,” restructuring the Church into “a Synodal deformation,” “worshipping the Pachamama earth goddess,” abrogating the traditional Mass, and driving out faithful priests.

Deacon Leatherby claims that those who remain in communion with what he calls “usurpers” of the Chair of Peter “set themselves outside the true Church. They are in a de facto state of schism although they may not realize it.” He says that submitting to Soto’s authority would “jeopardize my salvation” and asks the bishop not to correspond with him further.

Deacon Leatherby also offers his bishop pastoral care in return. “Oh, how much anger and rage consume you,” he writes. “You must have suffered greatly at the hands of men in your past to rationalize such debased treatment of others.” He urges Soto to repent and return to “the faith of your youth.” He suggests that the bishop turn to Jeremy for spiritual guidance, writing, “My son can and will help you.” Addressing Soto by his first name, he adds: “Jaime, I desire your salvation…and I forgive you.”

The Manifesto

In his reply to Bishop Soto, Deacon Leatherby includes a QR code that links to “An Explanation of the Times We Live In,” a 17-page document dated August 15, 2026. The essay lays out his religious worldview.

The essay begins with memories of his past. Thirty-five years ago, he writes, he experienced a life-changing conversion during a pilgrimage to Medjugorje. Just over a year after that pilgrimage, a member of a small prayer group to which he belonged began receiving what the group understood as messages from the Virgin Mary by “interior locution.” The messages continued for nearly four years. Deacon Leatherby claims that “a number of priests-theologians … found no errors in the messages and nothing contrary to the Catholic Faith,” and, although none declared them supernatural, they “found the messages edifying to the faith and spiritually profound.”

On the second page of the essay, he quotes from one of these messages, dated December 2, 1992, which warns that “The time is not far off when as my Son was hung from the cross, so will His Church be.” The message says that some Catholics will remain united with Mary at the foot of the cross. It continues: “But most of my children, like the Apostles, will flee. They will flee out of fear. They will flee out of misunderstanding…and many will flee out of disgust and anguish…for they will feel that the Church has failed them…like the Apostles felt.”

According to Deacon Leatherby, more than two decades passed before the purported messages resumed. Around ten years ago, he writes, “the messages recommenced, not in identical fashion but in a variety of ways and more expansively.”

And in 2017, he says that they received a message that Francis was a false pope. Toward the end of 2019, another purported locution said that Benedict, who left office in 2013, was still the true pope. Deacon Leatherby identifies the suspension of public Masses on March 17, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic as a decisive event — explaining his belief that “from that moment onward to attend a Mass celebrated in communion with Pope Francis, I would be committing the sin of schism, because Francis was leading a schismatic church.”

In the manifesto, Deacon Leatherby claims that later events and conspiracy theories were predicted by the group’s purported revelations. He lists what the group says it knew in advance: “Epstein Island, the Covid hoax, Adrenochrome, the Global Cabal.” He describes a “Network” of sexually active homosexual clergy and repeats a claim that Catholic Charities’ immigration work is a conduit for child trafficking. He cites an unnamed Chicago attorney’s claim that three American seminaries function as human-trafficking pipelines.

The essay also presents the deacon’s assessment of the state of the world. Upon Benedict’s death at the end of 2022, Deacon Leatherby writes, “the true Church is now in the wilderness” — the woman clothed with the sun who flees to a place prepared by God “for twelve hundred and sixty days.” He quotes St. Hilary of Poitiers urging fourth-century Catholics to abandon their churches for the woods and caverns rather than submit to an Arian bishop: “Safer to me are the mountains, the woods, lakes, prisons, and deep caverns.”

Deacon Leatherby also cites purported messages from the Mission of Divine Mercy in Canyon Lake, Texas, as confirmation of his own prayer group’s beliefs. One message, dated July 10, 2026, blames “the usurpation of the Chair of Peter” for poisoning the Church and describes faithful shepherds gathering their flocks “in the wilderness.” On August 14 — the day before the date on Deacon Leatherby’s essay — San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller announced that the Mission’s founder, John Mary Foster, had been found guilty of schism, declared excommunicated, and removed from the clerical state. The archbishop said Foster had called Francis and Leo XIV “usurpers” and continued celebrating Mass while omitting the pope’s name from the Eucharistic Prayer.

Deacon Leatherby has been involved in multiple Catholic apocalyptic circles. He has worked with Christine Watkins, author of the Catholic bestseller The Warning: Testimonies and Prophecies of the Illumination of Conscience. In 2019, they collaborated on the DVD set accompanying her book Mary’s Mantle Consecration — described on the Queen of Peace Media website as “an 8-part video series by Deacon David Leatherby and author, Christine Watkins.” (The series is available as a YouTube playlist.)

The book carries an endorsement from Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco. It has an invalid imprimatur from Ramón Argüelles, the retired archbishop of Lipa in the Philippines, whose imprimatur for The Warning was challenged by Kevin Symonds.

Watkins is a co-founder of the website Countdown to the Kingdom, which has promoted messages from controversial seers, including Father Michel Rodrigue, the Quebec priest disavowed in 2020 by both bishops with authority over him.

Watkins also has a connection with Jeremy, whom she interviewed about his family and vocation in 2014 for Radio Maria.

In emails obtained by Where Peter Is, the diocesan chancellor wrote in August 2020, responding to an inquiry about The Warning and its imprimatur, that the diocese was until then “not aware of the publication.” Two years later, a subsequent chancellor wrote that Watkins and Queen of Peace Media were no longer in the diocese and that Bishop Soto “would not allow the book as it stands to be used in formal Catholic circles.”

The Community

Sources who spoke with Where Peter Is on condition of anonymity describe a community that includes members of Jeremy’s family and followers from his years as a parish priest. They identify its meeting place as a rural property outside Newcastle, between Loomis and Auburn, with a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

One source provided a recording of a meeting and described a typical deliverance team gathering. Participants sit in a circle. One occupies a “special chair” and speaks in a voice they believe to be God’s.

In the recording, the woman whom the source identifies as a close family member speaks as Christ, addressing Jeremy as her son. Her speech is interspersed with crying and labored breathing. “Be not afraid of Bergoglio, of the person who breathes as the Pope in St. Peter’s,” she says. “You are not his son.” Later she dismisses his bishop’s authority: “Your bishop does not have authority over you. We do.”

She also declares: “I proclaim in heaven and earth that my son, Father Jeremy Leatherby, will reign in my kingdom.” At another point, she says, “This is my body. This is my blood.”

The session ends with the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be, and a priest’s blessing.

Relatives and sources close to the family worry that physical and mental health problems within the group have been interpreted primarily as spiritual attack. Those who have left, or who have raised concerns from outside, describe hostility and, in at least one case, near-total loss of contact with those who remain.

The Remnant Archipelago

The deacon’s vision of a Church surviving in scattered refuges runs through The Remnant Archipelago, a two-volume series published in 2025 through BookBaby under the name “A Marian Priest.” Both volumes are sold on Amazon: Part I: The E-Team and Part II: The Paschal Mystery of the Church.

Deacon Leatherby promoted the books to his mailing list. In June 2025, he advertised “a newly published book by a young priest I know,” offering copies from his home for $25. He described its contents as “amazing true stories by an exorcist priest” and encouraged recipients to look it up on Amazon because “the author will benefit from the activity.” In September, he sent another message promoting both volumes. Neither mailing identified the author as his son or mentioned Jeremy’s return to the lay state in 2020.

Sources familiar with the group identify Jeremy as the author and as the priest called “Father Peter” throughout the books. They identify his father as “Junior” and his mother as “Emilia.” The author biography describes a priest ordained nearly twenty years earlier, an exorcist for more than a decade, who “currently ministers to a remnant flock.” His father’s manifesto cites the second volume.

In the opening statement, the author says names and minor details have been changed to protect confidentiality. He presents the accounts as eyewitness testimony, insisting, “Everything illustrated is factual.” The first volume follows the team through a series of cases involving people it believes to be afflicted by demons. The second applies those experiences to the condition of the Church. The author describes what he witnessed as a “microcosm” of what was coming upon the Church and the world.

Part I reads something like Ocean’s Eleven, with Father Peter assembling a team whose members each bring a different skill to the job. Junior, a deacon, conducts the introductory interviews and helps interpret the team’s findings. Dominic is one of the strongmen who hold people down when sessions get out of hand. Christian, the team’s “Columbo,” draws on his store of miscellaneous knowledge to piece together puzzling cases. This is the book’s E-Team.

Then there is Marianne, a pharmacist who says she can see and hear the spiritual world. When she tells Father Peter that Satan has not been bound, the narrator explains how she knows: “She asked God, and He told her.” The chapter, “True Discernment of Spirits,” describes the team’s initial doubts about her ability, its use of scriptural formulas to test the spirits she hears, and an incident in which she locates her daughter’s lost keys. It presents those experiences as grounds for the team’s confidence in her guidance.

In Part I’s second case, Father Peter questions a purported demon about a woman with breast cancer whom the book calls Jennifer. He asks whether a piece of cloth she wore over her heart caused it. The answer is yes. “Why did the cloth cause cancer?” he asks. “It was cursed,” comes the reply. Later, the purported demon says her cancer went into remission because the curse was partly broken, but warns that the curse could return unless the priest takes further action. The team then prays.

In Volume II, the author applies the same approach to the Church under Francis. Its chapter titles include “The Mystical Body of the Antichrist,” “Anti-pope Bergoglio,” “The Counter-magisterium,” and “The Great Apostasy.” The author describes the institutional Church as having been occupied from within by an opposing body that retains the outward appearance of Catholicism.

The book credits Viganò’s 2018 accusations concerning Theodore McCarrick and the hierarchy with bringing Father Peter’s suspicions about corruption into focus. The section is titled “Viganò’s Testimony Brings Crystallization.” Father Peter’s conclusion that Francis was not pope rests on a further claim: that Benedict XVI had relinquished the exercise of papal ministry without giving up the office itself, making his resignation invalid. “The law is the law,” the author writes, “and thus, Benedict XVI most certainly remained the Pope.” Viganò himself was declared excommunicated for schism in July 2024, before the books appeared.

In chapter 12 of Volume II, the author predicts that priests of a coming “Remnant Church” will be excommunicated and laicized, but calls those acts “meaningless” because the authorities imposing them lack jurisdiction. He cites In Sinu Jesu, a book of purported private revelations examined in a 2020 series of articles by Dawn Eden Goldstein for WPI, quoting passages about the purification and renewal of the priesthood.

Viganò had also praised In Sinu Jesu. In an August 2019 account, Robert Moynihan reported that the archbishop had found the book “a great consolation” and asked him to identify its author so he could thank him. The author was Father Mark Kirby of Silverstream Priory, who later faced allegations of spiritual abuse and sexual harassment from multiple men under his authority.

Preparing for the Remnant

When the books were published, Jeremy had already been excommunicated and returned to the lay state. The books give his followers a religious explanation for a break with the Church that had already taken place.

Part II promises “locations of refuge, physical and/or spiritual,” where the Church will be preserved during the reign of the Antichrist. These scattered communities give the series its title, an explicit reference to Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. The author describes small pockets of faithful people dispersed around the world, through whom God will deliver “the humiliating and final blow to the Communist agenda.” In his account of what Mary imparted at La Salette, he envisions priests ministering to a hidden Church in barns, caves, and alcoves.

The family business continues to expand. In 2025, CBS Sacramento reported that Leatherby’s had bought three farms along the Sacramento River. A 2026 Folsom Times profile described a walnut orchard that had grown into a 120-acre operation supplying nuts, fruit, and other ingredients for the creameries.

For people who believe God speaks at their meetings, a warning from the bishop has little chance of changing their minds. The books and the deacon’s letters give them another reason to persist: the men condemning them belong to a counterfeit Church. Correction becomes further evidence that they are being persecuted for their faith.

Communion and Reconciliation

Jeremy Leatherby has not responded to a request for comment. Deacon Leatherby initially offered to speak but has not provided written answers to follow-up questions sent by Where Peter Is.

The Leatherby family’s story has much that Catholics might admire: a large family rooted in its community, a successful family business, and a shared faith that led members to serve as a priest and a deacon. That history is part of what makes these documents so difficult to read.

Some sources say that questioning the ministry has meant losing contact with people they love. Women who once trusted Jeremy as a spiritual director have described manipulation and abuse. Those accounts belong alongside the letters and books in any understanding of what has happened.

The documents leave the reader with a difficult question: How did people whose lives were so closely bound to the Church come to regard communion with it as a threat to their faith?

Bishop Soto’s response to Where Peter Is did not say whether the formal process mentioned in his warning had begun. He offered a prayer for reconciliation:

“Jesus, the Good Shepherd, never tires of gathering us into the merciful communion of His one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church. May Mary, Mother of the Church, intercede for us, that the Most Sacred Heart of her Son may heal all divisions among us, and unite all minds and hearts to His so that we may all be one in Christ.”

This story is developing. Jeremy Leatherby has not responded to a request for comment, and Deacon Leatherby has not answered written follow-up questions. This article will be updated if either responds or if further information emerges.

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Image: Sacramento skyline at sunset. Photo by Meritt Thomas on Unsplash