FOUR WHISTLEBLOWER PRIESTS MURDERED

‘Do you carry?’

Former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating resigned his position as Chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) National Review Board in 2003, owing to his frustration that the bishops were covering up abuse cases that he and the Board were investigating. Having compared secretive bishops to the Mafia, Keating wrote in his letter of resignation, “To resist grand jury subpoenas, to suppress the names of offending clerics, to deny, to obfuscate, to explain away; that is the model of a criminal organization, not my church.”

What Keating and most Catholics do not know is exactly how evil many bishops and priests really are — evil to the point of having people killed. Because of my work as a sex abuse advocate and investigative reporter who, for more than three decades, has reported on the sex trafficking of seminarians, gay orgies in episcopal residences, and other scandalous clerical behavior, I can’t tell you how many times the question has been put to me, “Do you carry?” Anyone familiar with the Lavender Mafia and the work of the late George Neumayr or Stephen Brady knows that a person can end up dead or have their life threatened for confronting and exposing closeted homosexual predator Catholic clergy. Readers of Windswept House, Father Malachi Martin’s masterpiece novel (which he described as a work of “faction,” i.e., a thinly disguised fictional account of factual events and real persons), will be familiar with the ruthless and violent behavior of both high and low-ranking predator clerics in the Church.

Monsignor Francis J. O’Connor was the 44-year-old editor of the weekly newspaper of the Buffalo Diocese whose body was found on March 13, 1966, drowned with fractures to the larynx and hyoid bone in his throat and contusions and abrasions to his scalp. A lay homosexual journalist, Robert Armbruster, who admitted being sexually attracted to O’Connor, along with Monsignor Franklin M. Kelliher, Fathers John Lewandowski, Norbert F. Orsolits, and William F. J. White, were all suspects in the murder. BishopAccountability.org has documented how Lewandowski, Orsolits, and White were later credibly accused of abusing numerous boys between 1962 and 1993. Within two months of the homicide, the Buffalo police were ordered to shut down the investigation owing to what was thought to be pressure on City Hall from Bishop James McNulty. A later investigation in 2023 could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt who killed O’Connor. However, The Buffalo News did report that “the investigation was shut down after a priest or monsignor became a suspect to avoid embarrassing the diocese.”

What the Buffalo media never knew, nor reported to this day, is that O’Connor and Monsignor Stanley Ropelski were investigating reports they received about adolescents living at the Working Boys Home who allegedly were being sexually abused by priests of the Buffalo Diocese. In the 1960s, most of the 12-19-year-old boys at the juvenile detention home were either orphans or boys who got into trouble with the law.

In conducting my own investigation, a confidential source revealed that many of the alleged abusive priests identified by O’Connor and Ropelski, including Lewandowski, Orsolits, and White, were housed at the Diocese’s Notre Dame Du Lac Retreat House at Bemus Point on Lake Chautauqua. It was reported that these priests would visit the Working Boys Home, where they groomed and abused several boys, including the late Thomas Hendler, the stepfather of Anthony Ravarini, the youngest victim of sex abuse in the Buffalo Diocese. Ropelski, who was afraid to speak up while he was alive, confided in my source that he drove O’Connor to Kelliher’s apartment, located within the Working Boys Home, where O’Connor is said to have told Kelliher that six boys reported having been abused by Buffalo priests, including White, whom they called “Whittie,” and Orsolits, whose code name was “Norbo.” Four of the six boys reportedly said that they were abused by Lewandowski, whom they referred to as “Lew Muscle.” Upon hearing these allegations, Kelliher was reported to have summoned Lewandowski to his quarters. When Lewandowski denied the accusations, O’Connor was reported to have said that he was going to get the boys, have them recount what happened to them, and publish an article with the names of the boys and their alleged abusers. Kelliher, a former boxing champion, who was known to discipline alcoholic and predator priests by “punching them in the mouth to get their attention,” was reported to have objected and to have hit O’Connor so hard that he unintentionally ended up killing him. Kelliher and Lewandowski were then said to have driven to Scajaquada Creek where they dumped O’Connor’s body, staged his car nearby, and meticulously folded his glasses on the edge of the guardrail to make it appear as if he had committed suicide. The severe wounds to O’Connor’s head and throat, however, ruled out suicide. To this date, the Diocese of Buffalo refuses to release or acknowledge the existence of files that can corroborate this account provided to my source by Ropelski and some of the abused boys.

Father Joseph Moreno was another Buffalo priest who was apparently murdered on October 13, 2012 while he was investigating clerical homosexual predation and cover-ups by both Church and civil authorities, similar to what was portrayed during the opening scene of the 2015 movie Spotlight. Although Moreno’s death was ruled a suicide, a plethora of forensic evidence and expert testimony would later indicate quite convincingly that he was murdered. Moreno was preparing to testify about alleged cases of sexual predation and homosexual misconduct before he was shot behind his left ear, a highly suspicious and improbable act for someone who was right-handed with an injured left hand. The police investigation also failed to explain why there was no gunpowder residue on Father Moreno’s hand or blood splatter; why multiple files and equipment with incriminating evidence against the homosexual network in the diocese were missing from his office; and why the Erie County chief medical examiner, Dr. Dianne R. Vertes, made several alleged procedural errors during her partial autopsy which included her failure to return Moreno’s intact brain for burial.

Buffalo Police to this day have not interviewed key witnesses, including a former seminarian whom Moreno called and spoke with the day before his death. According to the former seminarian, Moreno wanted to give him copies of documents that he had prepared for Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the Apostolic Nuncio in Washington, D.C. During their upcoming meeting, Moreno was going to present Viganò with documentation of clerical sexual predation and homosexual misconduct involving Buffalo priests, as well as Auxiliary Bishop Edward Grosz. Moreno’s twin sister, Sue, is convinced that her brother did not commit suicide but was murdered to prevent him from handing over incriminating evidence to the Nuncio.

Father John Minkler was a priest of the Albany Diocese who was found dead in his home on February 15, 2004. Three days before his death, Minkler was identified in a television news report as having been the author of a letter to New York’s Cardinal John J. O’Connor in which “he detailed ‘a ring of homosexual Albany priests’ including Bishop Howard Hubbard’s alleged long-term homosexual relationships with two younger priests.” Minkler had been working for three years with Stephen Brady, the President of Illinois-based Roman Catholic Faithful (RCF), in documenting homosexual misconduct involving Hubbard and diocesan clergy. According to Brady, “Father Minkler was scared to death that the bishop would find out.” Brady told Albany’s Times-Union that Minkler left him a voicemail message asking for advice the day before his death. Before Hubbard’s death on August 19, 2023, eight different men filed lawsuits against Hubbard and the Albany Diocese claiming that Hubbard sexually abused them when they were minors.

Minkler’s report about Hubbard is similar to a report about then-Springfield Bishop George Lucas who is identified in court documents to have engaged in sex with Father Peter Harman in the presence of other priests, seminarians, and two laymen in his episcopal residence. One of the lay participants, Tomás Muñoz, reported to Steve Brady that Lucas paid him $300 for coming to the orgy. After Brady reported this to the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo Higuera, both men reported having their lives threatened by Lucas who had the matter covered up by a self-appointed panel before being named the Archbishop of Omaha. Lucas, having recently retired, is currently being sued by a former high school seminarian for sexual abuse dating back to when Lucas was on the faculty of St. Louis Preparatory Seminary.

Father Alfred Kunz, a respected canon lawyer in the Diocese of Madison, was murdered at his church in Dane, Wisconsin, on March 4, 1998. His throat was cut with an edged weapon severing the carotid artery. While a local resident thought the rectory may have been targeted for a robbery, the Sheriff’s Office reported that nothing appeared to have been taken. Detective Timothy Blanke of the Dane County Sheriff’s Office reported that Kunz may have been murdered because he was “definitely looking into clergy sexual abuse and did not condone it.” One local resident theorized that “the diocese had hired a hitman to stop or prevent Father Kunz from investigating homosexuality within the church.” Before his death, Kunz, like Minkler, was working with Stephen Brady who was investigating Springfield Bishop Daniel Ryan. Like his successor, George Lucas, Ryan was accused of sexual predation with minors and homosexual misconduct with both clergy and gay prostitutes.

If the fictional “Father Brown” were investigating these murders, he might be led to conclude that O’Connor, Moreno, Minkler, and Kunz all made the fatal mistake of revealing that they had incriminating evidence of bishops and priests engaging in, or covering up, the sexual abuse of minors or vulnerable adults.

In July of 2023, I left Coronado, CA, where I had been living since 2009, and moved temporarily for 10 months to Niagara Falls, NY, within the Diocese of Buffalo. Not only did I meet with victims of sexual predation and reprisals, but I also spoke with Sue Moreno, the twin sister of Father Joe Moreno. What I uncovered during my investigation was what appeared to be unprecedented levels of corruption among the clergy of the diocese, the local police, and the Erie County District Attorney’s Office. For example, despite over 900 abuse claims being filed against the Diocese of Buffalo, Catholic Erie County DA John J. Flynn (whose uncle, Ed Cosgrove, had worked for the same Diocese of Buffalo) never prosecuted one accused priest during his entire time in office from January 2017 to March 2024. Flynn and Cosgrove were two of a few select lay Catholics of the Diocese invited to attend the installation ceremony of Bishop Michael Fisher during the COVID epidemic on January 20, 2021. Scandalously concelebrating the Mass was Father Art Smith who was reported to have sexually assaulted his nephew, as well as then-seminarian Ryszard Biernat. It was that same month that the Buffalo City Court judge dismissed bogus harassment, disorderly conduct, and trespass charges that Flynn filed in December 2019 against former seminarians Stephen Parisi and Matthew Bojanowski, who, along with other lay Catholics, were protesting against abuse cover-ups in front of The Catholic Center of the Diocese of Buffalo.

When Father Dennis Riter in May 1992 was reported by seminarian Wieslaw Walawender for having sexually abused Anthony Ravarini, the step-son of Thomas Hendler who was abused at the age of 12 by Father Lewandowski, Flynn’s Office accepted the claim on the part of Buffalo Catholic officials that semen reported on Anthony Ravarini’s shirt and face was the result of Ravarini masturbating in a bathroom of Father Riter’s rectory. The only problem with that claim is the fact that Ravarini was not around “10 years of age” as described in Walawender’s letter of May 9, 1992, but only 6 ½-years-old, thereby incapable of producing semen, which typically happens when a boy is between 10 and 12.

If whistleblower priests cannot be controlled by assigning them to remote parishes or to prisons (as my late bishop wanted to do with me), the next step is to suspend them as Bishop Richard Malone did to Father Ryszard Biernat, and as Cardinals Wilton Gregory and Robert McElroy did to Father Michael Briese, after these priests reported sexual abuse and cover-ups within their dioceses. If a priest refuses to keep his mouth shut and continues to speak out in the public forum, more dramatic action on the part of the Lavender Mafia may follow. So, for example, if you were to read an article like “Monsignor Gomulka Commits Suicide” or “Monsignor Gomulka Dies of Drug Overdose,” don’t believe it for a minute. I don’t do drugs; I’m not suffering from a terminal illness; and I love my family and friends too much to even think of taking my own life. The same no doubt can be said of other whistleblowers in this field who are speaking up now, or who may yet emerge. I do believe, however, that there are closeted homosexual predator Catholic bishops and priests who, in an effort to cover up immoral and often criminal behavior, would not hesitate to get rid of priest whistleblowers by assigning them to small, remote parishes, by suspending them, or by dealing with them in a far more nefarious manner.

If you appreciate my research and writings, please make a contribution 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.