Fort Worth pastor Donnie Romero called the victims of Orlando terror attack "the scum of the earth" and said he would pray for God to "finish the job" on those who remain hospitalized.
“These 50 sodomites are all perverts and pedophiles, and they’re the scum of the earth. And the earth is a little bit better place now,” Romero
said in a YouTube video.
The June 12 massacre at Pulse, a popular gay nightclub in Orlando, is reportedly the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
During the video, Romero, who leads Stedfast Baptist Church in Fort Worth, defended a California pastor who said he was glad that the Orlando victims were killed.
That pastor, Roger Jimenez of Verity Baptist Church in California, sparked controversy and drew at least 1,000 protesters for comments he made just hours after the shooting,
The Dallas Morning News reported.
"I’ll even take it a little further," Romero said in his video. "I heard on the news today that there are still several dozen of these q****s in ICU and I will pray that God will finish the job that that man started."
Romero defended his comments in an
interview with WDFW-TV.
“The Bible teaches they are predators, and I believe that every Sodomite is a pedophile and is a predator,” he told the station. “Just like if there was a building that had a bunch of rapists or a bunch of evil murderous people, and the building collapsed on them, or something happened where they were all killed, I don't think that's something we should mourn over, because they're evil people.”
Theologian Steve Kellmeyer rejected Romero's comments, telling WDFW, "No Christian who has any formal understanding of the interaction between the Old and the New Testament would say such a thing. He's just one more in a long list of people who don't get what it means to be Christian."
Twitter users expressed outrage at Romero's comments.