HOW CAN ANYONE RESPECT POPES LIKE FRANCIS AND LEO?

Most Catholics remain in the dark

Four years before his death in 2008, Navy Captain Ward Boston signed a declaration, which he also recorded, swearing that he and Admiral Isaac C. Kidd were ordered by President Lyndon B. Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to lie about their findings concerning the June 8, 1967, Israeli attack on the USS Liberty (AGTR-5). As legal counsel to the Board of Inquiry, had Boston disobeyed the unlawful order he was given, he could not appeal any punishment he would have received because the orders came from the two highest-ranking men within his chain of command.

What happened to Boston, who was forced to take part in a criminal cover-up, is also happening to many bishops and priests today who, like Boston and Kidd, either follow unlawful orders to cover up sexual predation and clerical homosexual misconduct, or speak out against this corruption only to be passed over for promotion like Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin; be removed from ministry like Bishop Joseph Strickland, Fathers Michael Briese, Thomas Doyle, myself, and others; be laicized like Msgr. Riccardo Coronado, or be excommunicated like Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.

Just as most Americans were unaware of how corrupt President Johnson was, so too are most Catholics unaware of how the Church and the media have covered up not only for both Pope Francis and Pope Leo, but also for many prelates like Cardinal Roger Mahony and others reported for engaging in and/or covering up the sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults. Even though there are 21 certified abuse claims in Los Angeles Superior Court that name Mahony as the actual perpetrator of rape, forced oral copulation, and abuse of mostly immigrant teenage boys, Pope Leo, like Pope Francis, continues to allow Mahony to remain in ministry like Father Marko Rupnik, accused of raping over twenty nuns.

Just as the media failed to investigate and report on numerous abuse allegations involving Mahony, so too has this also been done in countless other cases. In July 2016, when the late Richard Sipe reported to then-San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy for Pope Francis that he interviewed 12 seminarians and priests who claimed that they were sexually abused by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, McElroy dismissed the allegations as “hearsay” lest he and the Pope be accused of covering up for McCarrick. The mainstream and Catholic media both failed to report how Sipe’s complaint to Francis via McElroy was never mentioned in “The McCarrick Report,” a truly whitewashed document designed to exonerate Francis of the cover-up charges made by Viganò in his August 2018 “Testimony.”

When Lisa Roers (pictured above with those involved in covering up her abuse) reported to three Omaha Archbishops and to both Pope Francis and Pope Leo that she and another girl were sexually abused when they were around 10 years old in Elgin, Nebraska, her alleged predator, Father Dennis Hanneman, has yet to be removed from ministry pending the results of a thorough investigation, which has never to this day been undertaken. Insofar as child sexual abuse constitutes criminal behavior, is it any wonder that President Donald Trump accused Pope Leo of being “weak on crime?”

How could Pope Francis or Pope Leo discipline predator priests when they themselves have faced accusations of homosexual predation and abuse cover-ups? These allegations, which the mainstream and Catholic media have failed to report, help to explain why Pope Francis responded, “Who am I to judge?” when asked about his homosexually promiscuous friend, Msgr. Battista Ricca, and why Pope Leo dismissed his Papal Master of Ceremonies, Monsignor Marco Agostini, for outing him, along with a group of cardinals and bishops in Rome, by identifying them on an open microphone as “culattoni tutti insieme” (all the faggots together).

Leo was the Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops when Tyler Bishop Joseph Strickland was removed from office after speaking out against clerical sexual predation and homosexual misconduct at the USCCB meeting. Strickland knew that he could not appeal his dismissal because the two ranking members in his chain of command, Pope Francis and Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández (who was outed by Argentine celebrity nun, Sister María Lucía Caram Padilla), are both believed to be closeted homosexuals.

Strickland was fortunate that he was not excommunicated like Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, whose excommunication occurred a month after he reported being informed by a former Jesuit novice that Francis preyed on vulnerable young men when he was Master of Novices of the Society of Jesus in Argentina. A Jesuit priest, working in the U.S., made a similar accusation in 2015, in which he provided a graphic description of a novice’s abuse by Bergoglio.

When Leo was asked on his return trip from Africa about Munich Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who reportedly normalized the blessing of same-sex couples in his archdiocese, the Pope affirmed the blessing of gay couples, but did not support “formalized” blessings. In other words, he didn’t want them entered into parish registries like baptisms and marriages. As Chris Jackson astutely pointed out, Pope Leo “did not retract Fiducia Supplicans. He did not say that homosexual couples cannot be blessed as couples. He did not discipline Marx. He did not restore the old Catholic clarity that sodomy cries to Heaven for vengeance, that unnatural vice destroys souls, that public scandal must be corrected, or that shepherds who normalize mortal sin place themselves in grave danger.”

One should not be surprised that Leo also downplayed sexual sins, especially when he, as a perceived closeted homosexual, has yet to discipline even one of over 160 bishops credibly accused of sexually abusing children and vulnerable adults like nuns and seminarians. Unfortunately, if one is groomed in the seminary where one is introduced in one’s teens to gay sex, it will have a profound effect upon one’s preaching, teaching, associations, and pastoral ministry.

The point is, popes like Francis and Leo can never be expected to support and defend the Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality and discipline clerics who, in most cases, engage in the homosexual predation of teenage boys, when they themselves, like most bishops and priests outside of Africa and Asia, are perceived to be - and in most cases are - closeted homosexuals. Even though most laity would like to believe that their clergy are straight and celibate, bishops and priests throughout the world - including members of the Augustinian order - know that this is not the case.

After watching this compelling short clip of Sex Abuse in the Church: Code of Silence, how could Pope Leo or anyone even think of canonizing Pope Francis who, if one were to believe the Argentine abuse victims in this documentary, should have been imprisoned for covering up criminal behavior. Might this be one reason why Francis never returned to Argentina following his election, and why the media recently failed to address the validity of Trump’s allegation that Leo is “weak on crime?”

As long as the mainstream and Catholic media continue to cover up for complicit popes like Francis and Leo, just like they failed to report on the homosexual predatory behavior of cardinals like Mahony, one should continue to hear many Catholics write or say, “Pope Leo is so inspiring. I can tell by his smile that he is a saintly pope.”

If you 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.