ARE CATHOLIC PRELATES IN DANGER?

The unreported lives of Timothy Dolan and Ronald Hicks

Actor Edward Norton co-starred with Richard Gere in the 1996 movie, Primal Fear, in which Norton played the role of a sexually abused young man who brutally murders the Archbishop of Chicago. While Norton, in the role of Aaron Stampler, shows how being sexually abused by a bishop or priest can lead one to commit murder, it more commonly moves victims to become addicted to drugs or alcohol, to take one’s own life, or to become a homosexual like many priests, bishops, cardinals, and even some popes who were groomed in seminaries.

If you had a son who committed suicide after his abuse by a priest was covered up by a bishop, might you be tempted to avenge your son’s tragic death? A son waited years before informing his father that he was sexually abused by their parish priest. When the father asked, “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” the son responded, “Dad, you’re a United States Marine. I was afraid if I told you what happened, you would have killed Father N.” It was said that Pope Francis did not return to Argentina because of numerous death threats owing to the thousands of abuse cases he covered up despite claiming that sex abuse “never occurred in my diocese.”

To understand why recent popes and countless bishops have underreported and covered up clerical sex abuse - most of which involves teenage boys - one has to look closely at their seminary formation.

After serving and playing Mass as a boy, Timothy Dolan studied at Saint Louis Preparatory (high school) Seminary and Cardinal Glennon College from 1964 to 1972 where he met George Lucas and LeRoy Valentine with whom he formed very close friendships. Lucas, accused in a lawsuit of abusing a seminarian and engaging in homosexual relations with priests and laity in the presence of seminarians, and Valentine, accused of abusing multiple boys, continued their theological studies in St. Louis while Dolan was sent to the North American College (NAC) in Rome. Although Dolan’s biography states that he “earned a License in Sacred Theology” (STL) at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Dolan would had to have returned to Rome for a year after he was ordained in 1976 to complete the requirements for an STL. Why Dolan would lie about receiving an STL before he was ordained has never been explained.

Following his ordination, Dolan was assigned for three years (1976-1979) as an associate pastor to the Church of the Immacolata where he lived and worked with his friend, Father LeRoy Valentine. Three decades later, Chris O’Leary would come forward alleging that he was sexually abused by Valentine in the Church rectory from 1977 to 1981 when he was 10-15 years old. It appears that Valentine was abusing O’Leary during two of the three years that Dolan was at Immacolata (1977-79),

After receiving a Ph.D. in Church History from Catholic University of America in 1983, Dolan was invited to work at the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington, D.C. Neither then-Father Blase Cupich who worked for the Nuncio from 1981 to 1987, nor Dolan who succeeded Cupich from 1987 to 1992, attempted to solve “The Problem of Sexual Molestation by Roman Catholic Clergy” that Dominican Father Thomas Doyle brought to the attention of U.S. Bishops and Vatican officials in 1985.

Dolan served from 1994 to 2001 as the rector of the NAC in Rome where a former seminarian accused him of covering up homosexual misconduct. One of the NAC seminarians that Dolan approved for Holy Orders in 1999 was Peter Harman who would be accused in court documents of engaging in sex at a clerical orgy with then-Springfield Bishop George Lucas in 2004 - the same Lucas who was Dolan’s close friend in St. Louis from 1964 to 1971. Harman would be named rector of the NAC where he served from 2016 to 2022. When Harman was accused of covering up homosexual predation by his vice-rector, Father Adam Park, it was Dolan who coerced the whistleblower, his own New York seminarian, Anthony Gorgia, to leave formation.

Upon his return from Rome in 2001, St. Louis Archbishop Justin Rigali made Dolan an auxiliary bishop and placed him in charge of dealing with sex abuse cases. Rigali would later be made a Cardinal and be accused of “keeping about three dozen suspected abusers in ministry” in the Philadelphia Archdiocese.

Many abuse survivors do not report being abused until they learn of other victims who can corroborate their story. After reading a March 3, 2002, New York Times article that named Father LeRoy Valentine as an abuser, O’Leary reported his abuse to Dolan. According to O’Leary, Dolan reportedly said, “I know Father Valentine well. We were at the seminary together. We lived and worked together at Immacolata….I know he would never do anything to hurt a child.” Dolan had O’Leary meet with a psychologist employed by the diocese who convinced O’Leary that he was “just ‘misinterpreting’ Father Valentine’s actions and/or his intentions.” It wasn’t until years later that O’Leary met three other survivors who claimed reporting their abuse by Valentine to Dolan only to have their complaints dismissed as unsubstantiated.

Nine years after reporting his abuse to Dolan, O’Leary again reported his abuse to archdiocesan officials on May 10, 2011, only to be told that there was no record of him ever having spoken with Dolan or a psychologist in 2002. It was not until May 19, 2013, 36 years after the abuse occurred, and 11 years after O’Leary and other victims reported their abuse to Dolan, that Valentine was removed from ministry.

In 1993, while serving as Deputy Chaplain of the Marine Corps, I received a report that a Catholic Chaplain was accused of pedophilia involving a pre-pubescent child in Beaufort, SC. When we were able to locate another alleged victim by that chaplain at a previous duty station in Sicily, the Beaufort allegation was strengthened and the predator priest was tried and sentenced to 12 years in prison. Despite the fact that there were more than two victims who alleged being abused by Valentine, Dolan covered them all up. In an attempt to ascertain what motive Dolan might have had for covering up multiple abuse complaints, one investigator questioned if Dolan might have been homosexually involved with Valentine who was in the seminary class one year behind him in St. Louis.

In January 2014, when the court ordered the Archdiocese of St. Louis to produce a spreadsheet listing abuse predators and victims, O’Leary’s name did not appear as an alleged victim of Valentine, and O’Leary’s 2002 report to Dolan was kept off the spreadsheet. Abuse advocates will point out that O’Leary is only one of thousands – or tens of thousands – of abuse victims whose abuse is never reported by Catholic Church officials to civil authorities.

After Dolan covered up clerical sex abuse and homosexual misconduct for nearly three decades, Dolan was rewarded by being named the Archbishop of Milwaukee in 2002. Dolan perfected the “art of cover-up” in Milwaukee where he moved $57 million off the archdiocesan books into a cemetery trust fund to protect the money from lawsuits by victims of clerical sexual abuse. Court documents showed that Dolan also paid hush money to dozens of known predator priests to leave quietly, while publicly denying that such payments occurred. Even though Dolan regularly condemned the abuse of minors, files obtained in the discovery process showed how Dolan was complicit in the cover-up of at least 42 accused priests.

Dolan’s reward for saving the Catholic Church millions of dollars and covering up for numerous sexual predators was to be made the Archbishop of New York in 2009, followed by being made a cardinal in February 2012. When the State of New York lifted its statute of limitations for sexual abuse cases with the passage of the Child Victims Act and the Adult Survivors Act, roughly 1,300 lawsuits were filed against the Archdiocese of New York. Concerned that Dolan would revictimize victims in New York as he did in Milwaukee, Nate’s Mission, a Milwaukee-based survivor group, issued a press release about how the bankruptcy process in Wisconsin “prevented a fraud investigation into Cardinal Dolan’s manipulation of church funds” and “protected Cardinal Dolan from accountability and foreclosed further legal scrutiny of his conduct.”

While Dolan asserted that no priest with a “credible and substantiated claim of abuse against a minor is currently in ministry,” The New York Times reported how a predator priest, Father Donald Timone, was still saying Mass even after abuse settlements had been brokered. One of Timone’s victims, Tim Murphy, after more than a decade of waiting in vain for Cardinal Timothy Dolan to remove Timone from ministry, ended his life in suicide.

Dolan and the NAC are currently being sued in the Supreme Court of the State of New York by former seminarian Anthony Gorgia who refused to remain silent after witnessing grooming and receiving reports of sexual predation at the NAC. In addition to having covered up for Gorgia’s former Staten Island pastor, Father Thomas Devery, who was accused of abusing two minors, Dolan also covered up for priests like Monsignor John Paddack, Monsignor Thomas Derivan, Father George Sears, and others who remain in ministry despite having been accused of abuse or being named in sex abuse lawsuits.

Bishops like Dolan and priests like Timone are very fortunate that abuse victims don’t deal with them the way abuse victim, Aaron Stampler, dealt with the archbishop of Chicago in Primal Fear. Scandalized by the way Dolan has dealt with abuse victims, one Milwaukee priest said, “If there is one thing I am certain of in this life, it’s that Timothy Cardinal Dolan will burn in hell for all eternity.” In light of the utterly evil way Dolan has dealt with Tim Murphy, Anthony Gorgia, Chris O’Leary, and others, I can understand the utter lack of respect the Milwaukee priest and others have for Dolan.

Organizations and individuals who praise Dolan, while saying they abhor clerical sex abuse, are like the late ex-Cardinal McCarrick who spoke out in favor of strong measures against abusive priests even while he himself had a history of abuse allegations that were known to most church officials.

Just as Cardinal Robert McElroy was sent to Washington to cover up for Cardinals Gregory, Wuerl, and McCarrick, it seems that Bishop Ronald Hicks of Joliet, Illinois, is being sent to New York to continue Dolan’s cover-ups. Before being named Bishop of Joliet, Hicks had been Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich’s vicar general and auxiliary bishop. Like most closeted homosexual bishops who fill important diocesan positions with other homosexuals, lest they be outed like Cardinal “Tucho” Fernández, Hicks appointed David Salvato as chancellor for the Diocese of Joliet in 2021, who “married” his boyfriend, Jacob Aguilar, on December 13, 2025. The Chicago media reported that Hicks, like Cupich and Dolan, has a documented record of covering up abuse, underreporting abuse, allowing dangerous men to remain in ministry, and concealing the full scope of harm from the public. It remains to be seen if Dolan is one day paid a compliment by someone saying, “His successor was worse.”

As Christmas draws near, we are asked to be generous in sharing our blessings with others. If you truly appreciate my research and writings, please contribute to the “Save Our Seminarians” Fund that will help safeguard young men from becoming victims of homosexual predation in U.S. Catholic seminaries.

Gene Thomas Gomulka is a sexual abuse victims’ advocate, investigative reporter, author, and screenwriter. A former Navy (O6) Captain/Chaplain, seminary instructor, and diocesan Respect Life Director, Gomulka was ordained a priest for the Altoona-Johnstown diocese and later made a Prelate of Honor (Monsignor) by St. John Paul II. Email him at msgr.investigations@gmail.com.