DEAR POPE FRANCIS AND NOW POPE LEO

The evil and cover-ups continue

When one reads comments in response to various articles involving the Catholic Church, one often encounters writers who criticize other faith groups while proclaiming the religious superiority of Catholicism. These same writers often demonstrate little concern for victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic bishops, priests, and even seminarians. How can a religious group assert its spiritual superiority over other religions if it is responsible for so much suffering and evil? One way is to deny the abuse, whitewash investigations, argue that the allegations were “unsubstantiated,” and protect the reputation of the predator and the institution.

Pro-LGBTQ Catholic publications like America and the National Catholic Reporter that would deny the connection between homosexuality and clerical sex abuse documented by Rev. Paul Sullins, Rev. Darius Oko, and Swiss Bishop Marian Eleganti, fail to recognize that clerical sex abuse will not decrease as long as the Church continues ordaining homosexuals like millionaire Scott-Vincent Borba, while unjustly dismissing (not so wealthy) heterosexual candidates like Anthony Gorgia and countless others. While the average age of those being ordained to the priesthood in 2026 is 33, Church and seminary leaders don’t want to reveal how many of those men are homosexuals who were sexually active before or during formation, or how they view the priesthood as the perfect closeted place to hide, work, and live comfortably surrounded by other gay men.

The Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) and its subsidiary, the Catholic News Agency (CNA), Crux, Catholics for Catholics, and other Catholic media sources and websites, do not want to scandalize Catholics and lose viewers and readership (along with revenue) by publishing articles documenting the abuse and cover-up of abuse victims like Lisa Roers who has yet to have her abuse investigated after reporting it to three archbishops and two popes. Unlike many abuse victims who become alcoholics, drug abusers, or even commit suicide, Lisa was able to marry and is blessed with a loving husband and daughter.

An abuse victim, James Parker, who called me recently from Australia after reading one of my articles, recounted how it was decades before he reported his abuse to authorities, which is so often the case. When the police asked him if he could name other possible victims, he provided the names of seven other students. When the police reached out to interview these potential victims, they discovered that three had committed suicide, and the others suffered from alcohol abuse, drug addiction, or homelessness.

Parker, a convert to Catholicism at age 24, directs Courage and Encourage in Western Australia. In a very short, yet powerful, video, “Victor or Victim,” Parker testifies how people who feel they may have been born gay can have their “objectively disordered sexual attractions subjectively reordered by Jesus, assisted with great therapy.” Parker firmly believes that “the Church’s selective blindness to ephebophilia reveals much of its inability to face…homosexual tendencies within the priesthood and possibly, more so today, within the episcopacy.”

Because Parker himself wrestled with suicidal thoughts and was helped by a “fatherly Christian man,” he can appreciate good priests like Father Michael Briese who reported the suicides of two young men, along with allegations of sexual predation of seminarians by Washington Archdiocesan priests, Fathers Adam Park and Carter Griffin. Briese’s reward for reporting abuse, recounted by seminarians at the North American College (NAC) in Rome and at St. John Paul II Seminary in Washington, D.C., was to be suspended by Cardinal Wilton Gregory and threatened with laicization by Cardinal Robert McElroy. Briese maintains that “many Catholics are insensitive to the pain and suffering of abuse victims who often will never marry, never have children, or experience the joy of having grandchildren.”

When Lisa Roers reported being sexually abused by Father Dennis Hanneman in Elgin, Nebraska, when she was 9-11 years old, the abuse was covered up by Omaha archbishops Elden Curtiss, George Lucas, and Michael McGovern. The abuse she reported was truly egregious as recounted in “The Prayer of the Prey.” Neither Church officials nor Catholic laity want to address how her abuser inserted consecrated hosts into her vagina along with other objects (like rosaries and candles), which were inserted into her anus. While Lisa was able to survive, marry, and have a daughter, another victim, whom she reported being abused with her, has never recovered to this day. The other victim lives alone, suffers from serious mental health problems, and has aged way beyond her years.

Despite the fact that Lisa appealed her abuse to both Pope Francis (on September 30, 2024) and Pope Leo XIV (on March 15, 2025), she has yet to hear back from either Pope Leo or Omaha Archbishop McGovern after writing to the Archdiocese on numerous occasions, most recently on November 11, 2025.

Questions that I ask Catholics to consider are:

• How can Catholicism claim to be so superior to other faith groups when 23-25% of its clergy have been accused of sexually abusing children and vulnerable adults?

• How can Americans respect Catholic Bishops who not only received billions of dollars to help traffic illegal immigrants throughout the country, but who also kept silent when the pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ Biden Administration “pursued actions to limit Christians’ ability to act in accordance with their faith,” particularly on matters related to “life, family, marriage, and self-identity?”

• How many of the hundreds of thousands of misplaced immigrant children trafficked by the U.S. Bishops and Catholic Charities may have been sexually abused over the past few years by Roman Catholic clergy like so many foreign seminarians (Ryszard Biernat, Wieslaw Walawender, etc.) who were dismissed in Buffalo, Baltimore, and elsewhere for reporting their abuse?

• How long will Catholic laity remain silent and continue “paying, praying, and obeying” while weak, effeminate, and closeted gay clergy use the episcopacy and priesthood to hide their homosexuality while engaging in or covering up sexual predation and clerical homosexual misconduct?

• How can Catholics respect Pope Leo, who has yet to discipline even one of over 160 bishops credibly accused of abusing children and vulnerable adults, as documented by bishopaccountability.org?

The abuse that Lisa reported in the Omaha Archdiocese continues to be covered up to this day. Pope Leo not only allows priests like Father Hanneman, currently living at Boys Town, and Father Marko Rupnik, accused of raping over twenty nuns, to remain in ministry, but he also protects and entertains accused predators like retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony. It’s unbelievable how LA Catholics continue to support the Archdiocese even though there are “21 certified abuse claims in Los Angeles Superior Court which name Mahony as the actual perpetrator of rape, forced oral copulation, and abuse of mostly immigrant teenage boys — claims that were buried in a $880 million settlement to avoid trial.”

Despite a growing Gen Z interest in religion, numerous studies point to the fact that “American Catholicism is in steep decline.” As long as Catholics continue to pay obeisance to Leo, Fernández, Cupich, McElroy, and other Church leaders perceived to be closeted homosexuals, thereby allowing them to protect the reputations of homosexual predators like Mahony and others, one should expect an ongoing exodus of baptized Catholics and the conversion of churches for other purposes.

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Gene Thomas Gomulka is a sexual abuse victims’ advocate, investigative reporter, 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.