POPE LEO: ACT OR RESIGN

Lay Board needed to investigate Bishops

In June 2002, after The Boston Globe reported sexual abuse and cover-ups by Church officials involving around 11 percent of the priests of the Boston Archdiocese, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) unanimously passed the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People (aka the “Dallas Charter”). Bishops like Theodore McCarrick and Wilton Gregory, with ties to predator Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, wanted to hide the documented link between the incidence of clerical sexual abuse and homosexuality in the episcopacy and priesthood.

Owing to the homosexual orientation and behavior of many bishops, it came as no surprise that the bishops worded the Dallas Charter in a manner that excluded them from accountability by using identifiers such as “priests” and “deacons” instead of “clerics,” which would have included “bishops.” Because seminarians represented most of the victims of sexual abuse by bishops like Theodore McCarrick, Joseph Bernardin, Roger Mahony, Gregory Aymond, George Lucas, Michael Bransfield, and others, the Charter also excluded an accounting of the abuse of vulnerable adults whose omission was reflected in the subsequent 2004 John Jay Study.

Statistically speaking, only 2 percent (96 of 4,329) of the priest predators reported by John Jay researchers were pedophiles who abused pre-pubescent children, and most abuse victims were adolescent (11-19-year-old) boys. However, because most victims of homosexual predation by bishops are vulnerable adults like seminarians (and not adolescents), it should not be surprising that their abuse is not documented either by national or Vatican reporting agencies like the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors that is now part of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Cardinal “Heal Me with Your Mouth” Víctor Manuel Fernández.

When the U.S. Bishops excluded themselves from accountability in the 2002 “Dallas Charter,” they repeated the exclusion when the Charter was revised in June 2018 and, more recently, in June 2026. Ironically, the prelate today who heads the USCCB Committee charged with the protection of children and young people is none other than Richmond Bishop Barry Knestout. As I reported in a previous article, Knestout was present at ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s beach house the night of Friday, May 6, 1994, when McCarrick was reported to have sexually assaulted a seminarian, Wiesław Walawender. The seminarian later filed a lawsuit and won a settlement against the Archdiocese of Newark, identifying Knestout as having been an accessory after the fact.

Now that the U.S. Bishops have again excluded themselves from accountability, and seeing that the USCCB Committee on the Protection of Children and Young People and the Vatican Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors both fail to hold bishops and priests accountable for the sexual predation of vulnerable adults like seminarians and nuns, the laity need to undertake a “Call to Action” and demand the creation of a lay board to investigate bishops. Pope Leo XIV, who alone has the authority to discipline bishops, should resign and lead a life of prayer and penance ​unless he ​proves himself willing and able to laicize or excommunicate bishops who engage in or cover up abuse. To date, Leo has yet to discipline over 160 bishops credibly accused of abuse as documented by BishopAccountability.org.

I would like to identify three prelates, out of many credibly accused bishops, whom I believe should be laicized or excommunicated immediately based on a preponderance of evidence that they are guilty of engaging in and/or covering up clerical sexual abuse:

1. Despite the fact that there are “21 certified abuse claims in Los Angeles Superior Court which name retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony as the actual perpetrator of rape, forced oral copulation, and abuse of mostly teenagers and vulnerable adults,” he was still invited to deliver the keynote commencement address at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, CA, on May 17, 2026. The Los Angeles Archdiocese has paid out over $1.5 billion in restitution to survivors of sexual abuse. Like Slovenian Father Marko Rupnik, who has yet to be disciplined after being accused of raping over twenty nuns, so too is Mahony still a cardinal in good standing after being accused of abusing a similar number of seminarians.

2. Before recently being found guilty by a Texas jury, Father Anthony Odiong was kept in ministry by Church officials despite being accused of sexual misconduct by five Catholic women between 2015 and late 2023 and fathering a child with a sixth woman. Odiong’s case is similar to that of Father John “Matt” Lee, who was reported for sexual involvement with an enlisted sailor in 2002, only to be removed from ministry in 2007 after being arrested and charged with conduct unbecoming an officer, aggravated assault, sodomy, and failure to inform sex partners that he was HIV positive. Lee is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence. Because Cardinal Edwin O’Brien, while serving as the Archbishop for the Military Services, covered up and failed to act on the report of homosexual predation he received five years before Lee’s arrest, thereby endangering several U.S. Naval Academy Midshipmen and U.S. Marines whom Lee preyed upon between 2002 and 2007, O’Brien should be laicized or excommunicated for criminal omission and reckless endangerment.

3. The total ineffectiveness of Vos estis lux mundi to investigate and discipline bishops who engage in or cover up abuse is no better illustrated than in the case of retired Omaha Archbishop George Lucas. Multiple complaints and Vos Estis reports have been filed against Lucas over the years, alleging anal sex with Father Peter Harman (the former rector of the North American College); abusing a high school seminarian at St. Louis Preparatory Seminary; covering up the sexual abuse of Cynthia Yesko by two of his Springfield diocesan priests; and covering up the egregious sexual abuse of Lisa Roers and another girl reported to civil authorities and documented in “The Prayer of the Prey.” To date, Pope Leo has yet to order an investigation of Father Dennis Hanneman, whose alleged abuse has been covered up by no fewer than three Omaha archbishops who fear that more victims will come forward if the archdiocese publicizes Roers’ allegations.

At the November 2018 meeting of the USCCB, the Bishops were supposed to vote on creating a lay board, similar to the National Review Board, to investigate bishops accused of engaging in or covering up abuse. Pope Francis, who, with the help of Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, got the Bishops to table that vote, later promulgated Vos estis lux mundi as a means of dealing with abusive or complicit bishops. Because the Pope and Bishops will never properly investigate fellow bishops insofar as Vos Estis is nothing more than a whitewashed method of bishops covering up the abuse and cover-ups of other bishops, lay Catholics need to lobby for a totally independent lay board to investigate abusive and complicit prelates like Mahony, O’Brien, Lucas, and others.

If Catholics were truly pro-life and opposed to the sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults, they would not contribute one penny to the Church until such a lay board was created and staffed with uncompromising, qualified lay people with investigatory experience. The appointment of docile, naive lay people to such a board, like many Catholics currently serving as safe environment coordinators and diocesan abuse advocates, should be vehemently opposed. Such a board could use members like former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating who resigned his position as Chairman of the National Review Board in 2003, owing to his frustration that the bishops were underreporting and covering up abuse. 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.”

As long as current Church directives exclude bishops from accountability and do not include vulnerable adults like seminarians and nuns as abuse victims to be investigated and compensated, the Church’s sexual abuse problems will only continue, claiming more victims, bankrupting more dioceses, and moving more Catholics to leave the Church.

Thank you to those who contributed to my research and writing. God bless you for your generous support.

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.