NORTH AMERICAN COLLEGE IN ROME PREDICTED TO CLOSE

“I couldn’t stand the gay stuff”

When Michael Rose wrote Goodbye, Good Men in 2002, he claimed that the American College of Louvain (ACL) Belgium harbored a homosexual subculture among the faculty and students. Rose reported that a seminarian was dismissed after accusing the Vincentian rector of having a sexual relationship with a seminarian who was later ordained for the Diocese of Rochester. What Rose reported from Belgium was happening in many Catholic seminaries in Europe and the Americas as one former U.S. seminarian wrote, “I was in seminary in 2002 for one month and left as I couldn’t stand the gay stuff.” Seminaries like the American College could not be sustained with mainly homosexual candidates who were driving away heterosexual students. Founded in 1857 and administered by the U.S. Bishops for 154 years, the American College closed in 2011.

Today there is only one Catholic seminary left in all of Ireland, St. Patrick’s College at Maynooth. In 2016, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, the former Archbishop of Dublin, expressed concerns about the existence of a "gay culture" at Ireland's national seminary. Martin stated that anonymous allegations included claims of a "homosexual, gay culture" at the seminary, with students reportedly using the Grindr dating app. He deemed this inappropriate for seminarians, both due to their commitment to celibacy and because such an app would be seen as fostering promiscuous sexuality. Unsatisfied with Maynooth's leadership for not investigating these allegations, Martin sent Dublin's seminarians to Rome's Irish College instead of Maynooth which reportedly continues to promote the ordination of active homosexual seminarians.

After Martin turned over 80,000 files to the Murphy Commission documenting abuse cover-ups by his three Dublin predecessors, Pope Francis never made Martin a cardinal even though Dublin is the largest archdiocese in Ireland. When Arecibo Bishop Fernández Torres in Puerto Rico opposed transgender ideology and, like Martin, refused to send his seminarians to a gay-infested interdiocesan seminary, Pope Francis removed him in 2022 just like he did Tyler Texas Bishop Joseph Strickland in 2023 after Strickland spoke out against clerical sexual predation and homosexual misconduct.

There are only two seminaries remaining in England, Allen Hall Seminary in London and St. Mary's College Oscott in Birmingham. In May 2018, Sacred Heart Father David Marsden, SCJ, was dismissed from his post as formation tutor at St. Mary’s College, Oscott, England, by the rector, Canon David Oakley. The reason was that Marsden recommended that an openly gay seminarian be discontinued. While Marsden was fired, the openly gay seminarian was ordained and Oakley was made a bishop. There are half as many priests in England today than there were in 1965, dropping from around 8,000 to 4,000. That decline is not as bad as in the U.S. where, excluding retired priests and foreign born priests, the percentage decrease of American-born priests in ministry between 1970 and the present is 65%.

The North American College (NAC) in Rome was founded by Pope Pius IX in 1859 (two years after the American College in Louvain) near the Trevi Fountain. A larger NAC was dedicated by Pope Pius XII in 1953 located on the Janiculum Hill just a half mile from St. Peter’s Basilica. In a previous article, “Goodbye, Straight Men,” I reported how New York seminarian Anthony Gorgia was discontinued by Cardinal Timothy Dolan from residing at the NAC in an attempt to cover up predatory behavior on the part of the vice rector, Washington Father Adam Park, and a prior homosexual relationship between the rector, Father Peter Harmon and Archbishop George Lucas whom Dolan studied with for seven years in St. Louis. When multiple seminarians filed affidavits in an ongoing lawsuit against the North American College (NAC) corroborating allegations of sexual predation on the part of former vice-rector, Father Adam Park, and homosexual misconduct on the part of former rector, Father Peter Harman, Catholic News Agency (CNA) deceived readers by burying the plunge in enrollment that followed the scandalous revelations. While CNA falsely claimed in 2022 that the number of seminarians and graduate priests at the Rome seminary was “more than 200,” evidence shows that enrollment actually dropped by 60% from 252 when Harman became rector to less than 90 seminarians when he was replaced by Bridgeport Monsignor Thomas Powers. At that current rate of decline, it remains to be seen how long it will be before the NAC, built for almost 300 seminarians, is closed like the American College in Louvain.

One does not need a PhD in mathematics to know that more and more seminaries around the world that accept and ordain homosexuals will close owing to the fact that: 1) Gay and bi-sexual men, the pool from which homosexual bishops are recruiting, make up only 4.7% of the U.S. population; and 2) The presence of gays has impacted the retention and ordination of heterosexual candidates who report suffering from “destabilization,” i.e., a feeling of “not fitting in” similar to how a heterosexual might feel in a gay bar.

One third of those with whom I began my seminary studies who left before ordination, mainly to marry, were primarily heterosexuals. Discovering that forgoing having a wife and children was more difficult than they realized, and not wanting to live a double life, a second third left after ordination, also primarily to marry. Although there are some inspiring, celibate, heterosexually oriented priests in ministry today, the final third of my classmates who remain are mainly homosexuals, some who were removed from ministry, generally for homosexual predation. This pattern helps to explain why no more than 20% of American-born priests in active ministry today are heterosexuals. The percentage of homosexuals is lower among the 38% of priests in recent U.S. ordination classes who were born outside the U.S., as well as among the more than 25% of diocesan priests in most dioceses imported from other countries. If it were not for the foreign priests and foreign-born seminarians, as well as for the large number of illegal immigrants, Catholic churches would be as empty as most “LGBT inclusive Protestant churches” are today.

The fact that I never received a response from one of the 367 U.S. seminary officials and vocation directors I emailed about research showing how closeted heterophobic faculty members and seminarians are destroying the vocations of straight seminarians like Anthony Gorgia and Karl Discher, leads me to ask, “How long will it be before the “bishop-making” NAC in Rome will close its doors like its Belgian counterpart in Louvain?”

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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.