I am not Catholic. But if he was in a 30-year long homosexual relationship, shouldn’t the parish priest or someone else have known about it? Who vets the people who are asked to participate in the ministry there? I know at our church, there is at least some effort to make sure anyone wanting to be involved in ministry is not living in open sin before they are allowed to participate in ministry. And we have almost 3000 members. Since we have 3 different services, there are many people I don’t know, but I know our pastoral staff checks out anyone who works in ministry.
Priests get moved around a lot. Priests are so delighted that any man does any ministry. Mostly it’s all women anymore. You are also assuming that this man has always gone to this parish. It’s always been a touchy thing. When I was single for so long, I never had a priest come up and say are you gay? That would have completely inappropriate. No I am not gay, just took me along time to find who was chosen for me. I would guess that some might have been suspicious, but it’s not an issue until you tell everyone about it.
Priests, like every other good Christian, will try to assume the best of a person, looking for the most charitable possible interpretation of things. It is a sign of spiritual good health not to be constantly assuming the worst of a person. A public ceremony takes matters to a new level, as we see here.