The Archdiocese of New York has said it is “absolutely, 100 per cent untrue” that it was preparing to smear the Catholic journalist Michael Voris. Mr Voris, the editor of churchmilitant.com, alleged that the archdiocese had been collecting information about his personal life before he became a Catholic. In a post on the Church Militant website, he wrote: “We have on very good authority from various sources that the New York archdiocese is collecting and preparing to quietly filter out details of my past life with the aim of publicly discrediting me, this apostolate and the work here.” Mr Voris said that in his 30s he had “lived a life of live-in relationships with homosexual men”, and that in his 20s he “had frequent sexual liaisons with both adult men and adult women”. A spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York said: “It is absolutely, 100 per cent untrue that the archdiocese was collecting and preparing to release anything concerning him personally or his website.” Mr Voris said he “had great pain to overcome from childhood and my youth and instead of recommending myself to God in my youth, I gave in to the flesh and died spiritually. I shudder every time I think what would now be my lot had I died [at that time].” He said God “had rescued me from a miserable, horrible spiritual darkness: He apologised to those who were hurt by the revelations, saying: “I did not intend to deceive ... I thought it sufficient to simply state the true and overriding fact that I had led a horrible life, and ... been given sufficient grace to come home as a prodigal son.”