So the Bishop can breach penitent privilege when it suits. Just not when a child is being abused.It turns out that Buswell had recently opened up to his bishop, someone he saw as a peer and a friend, about concerns he had around the church’s policies regarding the LGBTQ community. The conversation had been a casual hallway chat that, according to Buswell, ended with him reassuring his bishop that he felt “confident I’ll figure it out, and it’s not a big deal.”
That conversation had been fresh on the bishop’s mind, the bishop told his congregant, when he had completed the form. “So, he told me, ‘I said Brother Buswell has expressed some concerns’” around the issue, but that ‘”...he is honest in his desire to understand the Lord and will come to the right decision on this.’”
Can the Bishop be sued by the ward member who lost their job over something he, the Bishop, said? Does it amount to libel?
“Libel is a method of defamation expressed by print, writing, pictures, signs, effigies, or any communication embodied in physical form that is injurious to a person's reputation, exposes a person to public hatred, contempt or ridicule, or injures a person in his/her business or profession.”
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/libel