Report: Teacher suspended for gay comments returns to job

A New Jersey Catholic school teacher suspended after controversy over comments she made on Facebook about gays has returned to her job.

Gannett New Jersey reports a letter was sent Friday to faculty and staff at Immaculata High School in Somerville saying Patricia Jannuzzi had been reinstated.

Jannuzzi was put on administrative leave last month and asked to disable her Facebook page after the comments drew wider publicity. Gannett reports one of the comments compared a lesbian relationship to news of Egyptian men being beheaded and another said gays were trying to “re-engineer” Western civilization into a slow extinction.

In Friday’s letter, Monsignor Seamus Brennan, pastor of the Church of the Immaculate Conception, said Catholic teachers should communicate the faith in “a way that is positive and never hurtful.”