John Henry Western Channel

I suspect that will be forced upon him regardless.

 

Whoever wrote this sounds like they weren’t thrilled to have to do so.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/john-henry-westen-restored-as-lifesite-president-and-ceo/

John-Henry Westen restored as LifeSite president and CEO
LifeSiteFri Jul 18, 2025 - 5:47 pm EDT




The LifeSiteNews Board of Directors voted today to restore John-Henry Westen to his former position.

“John-Henry Westen has been recognized by the board as the President and CEO of lifesitenews.com Inc. subject to administrative review and investigation.”

 

I listened to the YouTube video with the leaked audio of the board meeting that ousted JHW.

The most “egregious” charges against JHW come from an effeminate guy who obviously has an ax to grind, and charges JHW with “violations” of bs Canadian fair hiring and other DEI Canadian guidelines as well as interview questions which (gasp!) ask the potential employee their religious and philosophical beliefs. Which apparently according to Canadian law is “discriminatory.”

And the charges he lays against JHW just go downhill from there, including that he is a “sedevacantist.”

I don’t know but I suspect because JHW questioned the legitimacy of the papacy of Bergoglio and possibly that of Pope Leo.

But I’m 99% certain JHW is NOT a sedevacantist in the traditional 1958 sede sense.

I cannot trust ANYONE who accuses those who doubt the validity of Bergoglio’s papacy of being sedevacantists. It’s a grossly dishonest and vicious smear tactic.

This effeminate jerk went so far as to threaten to bring legal action via the Canadian government against LifeSiteNews is they didn’t get rid of JHW.

So he essentially blackmailed the board.

(I bet he is homosexual and despises JHW for open opposition to his lifestyle. And though I respect Bishop Strickland I’ll never completely trust him and his personal again for his role in this.)

 

I’ve met both JHW and Steve Jalsevek at quarterly meetings that were held in DC for pro life leaders. The meetings were private closed door affairs and organized by Fr. Pavone. (I was the chairman of a small but national pro life group dedicated to fighting euthanasia and physician assisted suicide at the time.)

So I’ve talked to both of them at length when I sat with them over meals.

I trust JHW completely and thoroughly enjoyed his company.

I was never quite comfortable with Steve J.

(Frankly I was never quite comfortable with Fr. Pavone either. He was more of a politician than a priest, and his Masses were at best sloppy.)

 

Link:
https://open.substack.com/pub/bigmodernism/p/the-coup-that-failed-lifesite-leo

 

https://akacatholic.com/the-scarlett-s-jh-westens-undoing/

The Scarlett S: JH Westen’s undoing
A YouTube video was posted yesterday by a woman by the name of Christine Harrington, whose channel is called Eternal Life Plan, wherein she shared an audio recording of the board meeting that led to John-Henry Westen’s removal from LifeSite News.

The recording was allegedly sent by a board member who asked to remain anonymous. The recording, which includes both in-person participants and those who spoke via conference call, appears authentic.

Mentioned in the meeting is a recent survey of LifeSite employees, the results of which evidently reflected negatively on Westen’s management.

Early in the meeting, Westen described how he had received a text from Bishop Joesph Strickland, who is neither a board member, nor an employee of LifeSite News, telling him, “You’re not fit for leadership.”

According to Westen, he then met with Strickland in person, hoping to discuss the matter. He went on to describe what happened instead:

He [Strickland] presented some of the survey and handed me an already written letter saying that I resigned from both the board position and any leadership at LifeSite, and that I could retain a job with LifeSite. Um, I didn’t know under what authority that letter was written or who wrote it.

A defensive Bishop Strickland, who was present during this part of the meeting via conference call, pushed back on Westen saying, “John-Henry, you can’t lay this off on me.”

We’ll return to Bishop Strickland’s role in this affair later.

The recording also includes testimony given to the Board by two persons. First, a man named Patrick Fabian, who serves as the Director of Administration and Controller for LifeSite News.

According to Fabian, Westen’s activities during his years of service raise “legal and ethical” concerns.

These, he said, “include, but are not limited to, inurement (activities beneficial to private interests), equal opportunity violations, discrimination, charity fraud, soliciting funds from donors under false pretenses, unlawful employment of illegal aliens, conflicts of interest, and nepotism.”

Fabian went on to give specific examples of each. You can listen to the recording if interested in those details.

Are these truly unlawful activities? Are they really more a matter of questionable business decisions and poor management?

That remains to be seen. Either way, the fact of the matter is that the real issues that gave rise to Westen’s removal were revealed most plainly in the testimony given by Ann Lyke, who has been with LifeSite for four years, the last thirteen months of which serving as Director of Advertising and Production, a position that also exercises oversight of the outlet’s marketing efforts.

According to Lyke, when she assumed her current position last June, the video production department was “very disorganized,” its staff “underperforming” and “disgruntled.”

“Many videographers had quit just prior to me taking over,” Lyke told the Board. “One of the two that were left quickly resigned, citing the constant criticism and attacks towards Pope Francis.”

Now we’re drawing closer to the heart of the matter.

The marketing department that she inherited was, according to Lyke, “very fractured, confused, and frustrated.” In addition to complaints from the staff about John-Henry’s management style, she revealed:

The other complaints that I received was that … it seemed like pope bashing was all John-Henry cared about.

She went on to say, “Employees do not agree with John-Henry on video content or editorial content, [but] they are too afraid to say anything.”

After the election of Leo, she said that some even asked, “Are we going to hate this pope, too?”

Speaking with the Canadian outlet, Catholic Register, Steve Jalsevac, Co-Founder of LifeSite, said:

“In recent years, John-Henry worked and insisted that we change the highly successful LifeSite News mission to become a dramatically different one of a traditional, Latin Mass Catholic evangelizing, religious organization to draw readers into the Catholic Church according to the teachings of the Council of Trent.

As reported by the Register, this change in mission is responsible for what Jalsevac described as a steep drop in readership and financial support, which he cited as the immediate cause of the Board’s lack of confidence in Westen.

Ann Lyke, citing declining page views in that same time period, said, “In simple terms, we have abandoned our audience.”

She criticized Westen for his determination to put out “opinion pieces,” presumably referring (at least in substantial part) to those previously described as “pope bashing.”

“As for our positive posts about Pope Leo,” Lyke revealed, “John-Henry has advised me that they are too, and I quote, ‘pie in the sky.’”

Con’t

 

Con’t


Speaking with the Canadian outlet, Catholic Register, Steve Jalsevac, Co-Founder of LifeSite, said:

“In recent years, John-Henry worked and insisted that we change the highly successful LifeSite News mission to become a dramatically different one of a traditional, Latin Mass Catholic evangelizing, religious organization to draw readers into the Catholic Church according to the teachings of the Council of Trent.

As reported by the Register, this change in mission is responsible for what Jalsevac described as a steep drop in readership and financial support, which he cited as the immediate cause of the Board’s lack of confidence in Westen.

Ann Lyke, citing declining page views in that same time period, said, “In simple terms, we have abandoned our audience.”

She criticized Westen for his determination to put out “opinion pieces,” presumably referring (at least in substantial part) to those previously described as “pope bashing.”

“As for our positive posts about Pope Leo,” Lyke revealed, “John-Henry has advised me that they are too, and I quote, ‘pie in the sky.’”

From what has been said thus far, it seems that Westen’s failure to engage in Leophoria (an evidently lucrative endeavor that has the potential for turning Novus Ordo emotionalism into cash), and his sober assessment of the Bergoglian disaster, were major contributing factors leading to his dismissal.

In other words, it appears that Westen took his eye off the bottom line, choosing instead to view reality through a more Catholic lens. Does he still have a way to go in this regard? Sure, but as everyone paying attention has noticed, he has been moving in the right direction for some time now.

No better evidence of Westen’s Catholic maturation is the fact that LifeSite News, under his direction, has published a number of articles written by S.D. Wright and Matthew McCusker, editors of the outstanding and scholarly web journal, WM Review, with which, I trust, nearly all regular readers of this space are familiar. (If not, you should be.)

This brings us to the biggest reason why Westen is now persona non grata at the media outlet that he co-founded: He has gone to the periphery of so-called Catholic traditionalism and now has the unmistakable smell of sedevacantist sheep.

Ann Lyke provided a snapshot of just how repulsive the fragrance of sedevacantism is in such places as LifeSite News. In her testimony to the Board, she said:

I need to also mention one of the troubling topics that was discussed at this last meeting; the fact that we have approximately five sedevacantists on staff in key editorial positions. What I witnessed at this meeting has been bothering me for over a month now.

In the presence of Bishop Strickland, Deacon Keith (Fournier) asked John-Henry if he knew who the sedevacantists on staff were. And John-Henry clearly responded, “No.”

This was a blatant lie, and everyone in the room knew it. This was an embarrassment to watch. Can you imagine the harm that would come to LifeSite if this news became public? If our enemies or if our donors discovered that our CEO has been knowingly employing these people for years and doesn’t see a problem with it?

Imagine if Ann Lyke, a Director at LifeSite News – who, I have on good authority, isn’t even Catholic – had said:

We have approximately five Jews on staff in key editorial positions. Can you imagine the harm that would come to LifeSite if this news became public? If our enemies or if our donors discovered that our CEO has been knowingly employing these people for years and doesn’t see a problem with it?

If this had been said, Lyke would be pilloried and sued (if not hogtied and beaten), and this even if the Jewish employees in question were pro-abortion activists. Condemn an entire group of faithful Catholics as utterly unemployable simply for recognizing that men who hate the Church cannot also be popes, however, and it’s open season!

In her earlier testimony, Lyke complained to the Board that, thanks to Westen, the content of LifeSite News no longer reflects the organization’s tagline, “life, faith, family, and freedom.”

I ask you, who on planet earth is more committed to an authentic defense of “life, faith, family, and freedom” than sedevacantists?

In a statement published on LifeSite News, Bishop Strickland wrote:

Some have suggested — or outright claimed — that he [Westen] was removed because he spoke the truth about Pope Leo XIV or about the troubling trends within the Church. Let me state this clearly: that is not true. The internal decisions of LifeSiteNews are not mine to explain.

Strickland (who departed the meeting before Ann Lyke spoke), knew very well that the presence of sedevacantists on staff (the horror!) was an issue. (Recall that Lyke placed him at the meeting where Keith Fournier confronted Westen about that very situation.)

There can also be little doubt that Bishop Strickland knows very well that Westen’s “pope bashing” and reluctance to engage in Leophoria were major factors in his dismissal as surely those complaints were contained in the survey results.

That being so, his statement denying that Westen was removed because he spoke the truth about Pope Leo XIV or about the troubling trends within the Church is, at best, a half-truth.

Properly speaking, Westen was removed because speaking the truth about Leo XIV and troubling trends within the Church isn’t a financially beneficial activity, i.e., the truth isn’t a highly marketable commodity.

It seems to me, therefore, that the real issue in this case isn’t so much about Westen’s managerial missteps, or even his allegedly unlawful business practices. At base, it’s about the fact that LifeSite News, like just about every other tradservative media outlet, prioritizes money over mission.