Last year, I posted this eye-popping story about a man who sued a priest over a homily.

Now, an alert reader has sent me an update:

An Algonquin man will get a formal apology, but no financial reward, as part of an out-of-court settlement entered this morning ending his lawsuit claiming a parish priest defamed him from the pulpit.

Angel Llavona and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockford struck a deal under which the Rev. Luis Alfredo Rios of St. Thomas the Apostle Church will apologize to the Algonquin man before his congregation.

The Diocese also will pay Llavona about $13,750 — his costs of filing and pursuing the lawsuit — but not any of the compensatory or punitive damages he was seeking for comments he claimed caused him emotional distress and damaged his professional reputation. He is a teacher at Maine West High School in Des Plaines.

“We pray that this settlement serves to bring closure to an unfortunate incident and that Mr. Llavona and the Catholic community of Crystal Lake can now experience the peace that reconciliation brings,” the Diocese said in a statement issued this morning.

Llavona could not immediately be reached for comment this morning. His attorney, Dennis Favaro, declined to comment.

The suit, filed last year in McHenry County Circuit Court, stemmed from remarks Rios made during a sermon in October 2006.

The remarks, court documents state, came after Llavona left Rios a phone message critical of his previous sermon, saying “I have seen poor homilies, but yesterday broke all records.”

The following Sunday, the suit states, Rios played that message during mass, then, referring to Llavona, asked his congregation “What should we do, send him to hell or another parish?”

Rios also criticized Llavona’s work with the church’s religious education program.

“That’s why it is no surprise to me we had the kind of religious education we had,” the lawsuit quotes Rios as saying. “That’s why we didn’t get any altar boys.”

Those remarks, Llavona claimed, damaged his reputation as a teacher at Maine West.