According to the "Palo Alto Weekly" (July 25, 2006), he "became nationally famous, or infamous, for announcing on January 18, 1976, in his sermon at St. Ann's Chapel in Palo Alto that he had 'done the one thing the (Catholic Church) institution will not tolerate. I have fallen in love.'" That spring, he married artist Eve De Bona and became stepfather to her two daughters, Leslie and Ariel Gore. On the same day, he received a letter from the Archbishop of San Francisco, Joseph T. McGucken, informing him that he had been excommunicated by Pope Paul VI.