FORMER SECRETARY TO ST. JOHN PAUL II OUTED

Dziwisz also covered up abuse in the United States

The Polish media have created a stir recently by outing Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, the former personal secretary of Saint John Paul II, for carrying on a homosexual relationship with an Italian, Andrea Nardotto, whom he ​ordained a permanent deacon in a private ceremony in Warsaw. This news report is similar to how Monsignor Battista Ricca whom Pope Francis placed in charge of his Vatican residence, the Casa Santa Marta, was reported for cohabitating with a Swiss Army captain, Patrick Harri, when he was assigned to the Nunciature in Uruguay.

Deputy Marshal of the Senate, Michał Tomasz Kamiński, disclosed during a podcast that was reported by Newsweek Poland on December 7, 2024, how Dziwisz purchased an expensive apartment ​for Nardotto in the historic district of Krakow​. During the podcast​, Kamiński discussed how there are photos in the media of a “well-known Polish hierarch holding hands with his Italian friend” while “one entire city in Poland now roars about an apartment bought for the friend, imported from Italy, by the said well known Polish hierarch.” Scandalized by flaunting their gay relationship in public, Kamiński further said, “And everyone knows about it” (I wszyscy o tym wiedza).

Kaminski believes it is a waste of time to report Dziwisz to Pope Francis who has yet to deny allegations by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò and others that he engaged in homosexual relationships with Jesuit novices before appointing an accused homosexual, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, to ​o​versee sexual abuse allegations in the Church. Kaminski joins other lay Catholics who believe that prelates like Dziwisz, Fernandez, and even Francis, feel they are exempt from observing the moral norms that they expect praying, paying, and obeying Catholics to follow. Given the current state of moral leadership in the Church similar to the pontificates of homosexually active Popes Leo X (1513-1521) and Julius III (1550-1555), Kaminski believes fraudulent shepherds like Dziwisz and others who look down upon him and other lay Catholics as docile sheep are responsible for the fact that there are fewer sheep to shepherd each day.

While the secular media might dismiss this report as simply a case of consenting adults, many people fail to realize how homosexual Catholic clergy are responsible not only for the loss of hundreds of thousands of heterosexual seminarians and priests, but also ​for millions of Catholic faithful who are scandalized by reports of clerical sex abuse and sexual misconduct. One former straight seminarian who was a victim of homosexual predation is Wiesław Jonathan Walawender whose Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) ​​flared up when he heard about the secret love life of Dziwisz.

Walawender, who grew up in a small village in southeastern Poland near the Ukrainian border, was accepted to study for the priesthood by the Buffalo Diocese. On April 16, 1992, while working with Father Dennis Riter at Queen of All Saints parish in Lackawanna, NY, Walawender witnessed a young boy, Anthony Ravarini, running out of the rectory with semen on his face, hair, and shirt. According to Ravarini, Riter forced his head onto his penis and ejaculated into his mouth and onto his face.

Within a week of the incident, Walawender was called in by Christ the King Seminary rector, Father Frederick Leising, who threatened him to keep quiet about what he witnessed, saying, “We can afford to lose one seminarian.” Leising would later be accused in June of 2018 of sexually abusing a 19-year-old girl in the 1980s.

Not intimidated by threats of being sent back to Poland, and being a man of integrity, Walawender reported Riter in a letter dated May 9, 1992​ to Bishop Edward Head and Auxiliary Bishop Edward Grosz. Because he was still learning English, Walawender’s confessor and spiritual director, Father Joseph Moreno, helped him write the letter. Twenty years later, on Saturday, October 13, 2012, the day before Walawender was to have Sunday dinner with Moreno, Moreno’s body was found in his rectory. While the death was ruled a suicide, a plethora of forensic evidence points to murder. What neither the police nor the District Attorney’s Office reported was that Moreno called Walawender on Friday, October 12, 2012, and told him that he wanted to give him copies of incriminating documents about homosexually active Buffalo clergy, including Auxiliary Bishop Edward Grosz, that he was going to share the following week with Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States. Moreno’s twin sister, Sue, has published extensive information about her brother’s death online at https://gavinfish.com/cases/father-joseph-moreno/.

In 2018, when a copy of Walawender’s May ​9​, 1992 letter about Riter and Ravarini was leaked to Buffalo investigative television news reporter, Charlie Specht, Buffalo diocesan officials argued that the reported semen belonged to Ravarini who masturbated in the rectory bathroom. Police and Erie County officials, including Erie County District Attorney John Flynn, a Catholic close to then-Bishop Richard Malone and Auxiliary Bishop Grosz, used Walawender’s letter which estimated Ravarini to have been around “10 years of age” to back up the Diocese’s claim. Their cover-up is clear based on the fact that Ravarini, seemingly big for his age, was only ​​six-and-a-half years old at the time of the incident and physically incapable of producing semen. Anyone familiar with the opening scene of the 2015 Academy ​​Award-winning movie, Spotlight, is familiar with how local law enforcement and the District Attorney’s Office in many dioceses have cooperated with Catholic Church officials in covering up clerical sexual abuse.

In August 1993, Walawender traveled to Denver, Colorado where Pope John Paul presided over World Youth Day. It was there that he handed a letter to the Pope’s personal secretary, Monsignor Stanisław Dziwisz, that he requested Dziwisz share with the Pope. The four-page letter in Polish, dated August 5, 1993, addressed the sexual predation and homosexual misconduct Walawender had witnessed in the United States since his arrival in February 1989. In addition to discussing Riter’s abuse of Ravarini that was covered up by diocesan officials, Walawender also recounted another disturbing sexual abuse incident involving Bishop Grosz, Father Thomas Gresock, and two teenage boys at the Marriott Hotel in Krakow.

In the beginning of January 1994, five months after not having received a response to the letter he hand-delivered to Monsignor Dziwisz, Walawender penned a letter in Polish dated January 16, 1994​, that he mailed directly to Pope John Paul II. Instead of receiving a response from the Pope thanking him for his report and calling for an investigation into the clerical abuse documented in Walawender’s correspondence, Walawender was approached in mid-February by Bishop Head’s secretary, Monsignor Peter Popadick, who told Walawender, “The next time you decide to write to the Holy Father, make sure you also send a copy to Bishop Head.” This “friendly advice” came from a priest who himself was accused in a lawsuit filed in August of 2019 of sexually abusing an 11-year-old boy while he was working at Bishop Fallon High School in the 1970s.

Walawender felt betrayed by both Monsignor Dziwisz and Pope John Paul II. His betrayal was similar to a European mother superior who complained in writing to the Vatican in the 1990s about her African bishop who wanted her to make her nuns and novices available to his priests lest they contract AIDS from prostitutes. Instead of disciplining the bishop and priests, the Vatican returned the complaint to the bishop who had the mother superior returned to Europe. Many nuns were later impregnated; some contracted AIDS; and some were forced to have abortions. One priest conducted the funeral of a nun whose death was the result of an abortion he forced her to have after he got her pregnant. In April 2001, the European Parliament issued a formal condemnation of the Vatican chastising “all the sexual violations against women, particularly against Catholic nuns.”

In time Walawender would be sexually assaulted by ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick at his New Jersey beach house and later drugged and sodomized by Monsignor Edward Staub at St. John the Evangelist rectory in Severna Park, Maryland. Fearing criminal prosecution for covering up Walawender’s sexual assault by Staub, Baltimore Cardinal William Keeler had Walawender expelled from the rectory and offered a one-way ticket back to Poland after having been sex trafficked to the United States eight years earlier.

Documentation of Walawender’s case is available online at “Walawender.” Archbishop William Lori of the Baltimore Archdiocese continues to cover up what happened to Walawender like he and Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, covered up the sexual abuse reported by former Baltimore seminarian Karl Discher.

Without fear of being called homophobic, politicians like Kamiński are beginning to speak out about homosexual prelates like Dziwisz who carry on affairs after covering up abuse reported by heterosexual seminarians who are unjustly dismissed without any compensation after being in formation for many years. Kamiński and other devout Catholics are expressing their anger at prelates like Dziwisz who live lavish lives while not practicing what they preach. One Polish commentator wrote, “The homosexual mafia rules the Vatican. It's known who covered up the pedophilic affairs of the clergy during the reign of John Paul II.” Scandals like this in Poland and other countries have led millions of Catholics to stop practicing their faith. If the “homosexual mafia” continues to rule the Vatican, Kamiński fears that Poland and other countries will go the route of Ireland which for centuries was known as a very devout Catholic country.

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.