It is very discouraging when you document clerical sex abuse and cover-ups based on credible evidence, and your own family and friends question the veracity of your reporting. Unfortunately, they read articles or watch newscasts like, “Pope Leo denounces what he calls ‘scourge’ of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy,” and they are misled into believing that Leo truly cares for abuse victims. Abuse advocates like myself who receive multiple reports of abuse cover-ups by Leo and countless bishops know better than to believe what is nothing more than “Fake News.”
Why is it that news reporters don’t ask the Pope questions like, “Holy Father, if you are really upset with sexually abusive bishops and priests, then why, after over a year in office, have you not laicized or excommunicated even one of over 160 bishops credibly accused of abusing children and vulnerable adults?” Like his predecessor Pope Francis, Leo is all talk and no action when it comes to disciplining clerical sexual predators, the majority of whom are homosexual clerics who prey on teenage boys while also engaging in consensual sex with other gay clerics and non-clerics alike.
Lies and cover-ups are often enabled when the media fail to investigate and report the truth, or when political or religious leaders coerce the media to “look the other way.” Let’s consider three major cover-ups in history that were and are being enabled by the media.
When mass graves of some 22,000 Polish nationals, murdered between April and May 1940, were discovered by German soldiers in the Katyn Forest, the Soviet Union’s longtime dictator, Joseph Stalin, claimed that the victims had been murdered by the Nazis. Even though President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and many media outlets knew that Stalin was lying, they participated in the cover-up for political reasons.
While working in a Polish parish in Leicester, England, in 1972, I met former members of Polish Fighter Squadron 303, the highest-scoring Polish and overall Allied fighter squadron during the Battle of Britain. These brave pilots were not allowed to march in the June 8, 1946 London Victory Celebration because the British government sided with Stalin over the Polish Government in exile. It was not until 1990, 50 years after the Katyn Forest massacre, that General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev formally expressed “profound regret” and admitted responsibility for the killings by the Soviet secret police.
While it took 50 years before the lie and cover-up about the Katyn Forest Massacre was exposed, it has been over 59 years since Israeli air and naval forces attacked the USS Liberty (AGTR-5) during the Six-Day War, which they claimed was an accident. Similar to covering up for the lying Soviets, the U.S. Government continues to cover up for the Israelis by writing, “The Government of Israel . . . has consistently maintained that the attack was the result of an error….The Navy plans no further investigations into the incident.” Note that the Government’s response does not say that “the attack was the result of an error.” It says that the Israeli Government “maintained that the attack was the result of an error.” Every person I know in the intelligence world firmly believes that the attack was intentional. One of my former Coronado chapel members, Captain Ward Boston, stated in an affidavit before his death, “I know from personal conversations I had with Admiral Kidd that President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude the attack was a case of ‘mistaken identity’ despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”
Interestingly, when the LIBERTY was attacked on June 8, 1967, most U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times, not only buried the story, even though 34 Americans were killed and 171 were wounded, but parroted the ongoing lie, claiming that “Israel in Error Attacks U.S. Ship.” There are various documentaries about the LIBERTY that debunk the notion that the attack was an accident. One of the best documentaries is “When Israel Attacked the U.S.A.”
Like in the case of the LIBERTY, the mainstream and Catholic media, including civil officials, often cover up clerical abuse in the Catholic Church, as was depicted in the opening scene of the movie Spotlight. When Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò reported receiving allegations that Pope Francis sexually abused Jesuit novices in Argentina, not one U.S. mainstream media source, unlike Canadian-based LifeSiteNews, reported the story. When French documentary maker and investigative reporter Martin Boudot produced Sex Abuse in the Church: Code of Silence, not one U.S. mainstream media source, unlike LifeSite News and Church Militant, covered how Pope Francis covered up countless sex abuse cases in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires despite lying by writing that clerical sex abuse “never occurred in my diocese.”
Because most Americans, including American Catholics like many of my relatives and friends, are not informed of abuse, cover-ups, lies, and reprisals perpetrated by popes and bishops, it is understandable that they question my reports about egregious sexual misconduct that has destroyed countless lives; cost the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S. over $6 billion in abuse settlements; and moved nine out of ten cradle Catholics to leave the Church. In response to a Notre Dame study documenting this exodus, one writer commented, “I recently left the Catholic Church. It is a festering rat’s nest of skittles [gay] men and a small remnant of cowardly heterosexuals. I wish it weren’t so. I really do.”
Fortunately, I am not alone in my assessment of “The State of the U.S. Catholic Episcopate and Priesthood.” One Substack reader recently wrote,
“I am amazed by the crowds that gleefully swarm around the pope in Rome and elsewhere where he travels. I am appalled at the institution that elects pope after pope who continue to cover up abuses. The Church leaders have such power to instill the fear of hell in their followers, but they demonstrate no such fear themselves. They strut around in their medieval robes to exhibit their ranks and power, but they do not act faithfully as the shepherds they pretend to be. I am amazed that there are so few - if any - acts of revenge against the priests and bishops who are complicit in these crimes. Even the priests and bishops who know what’s going on are complicit by their inaction. Where I live, there are a surprising number of churches of all types closing up, even though the population has been stable for decades. The rot in the Catholic Church has spilled over into the general public.”
Just as the truth behind the Katyn Forrest Massacre was covered up for five decades; just as the truth behind the attack on the USS Liberty (AGTR-5) continues to be covered up to this day; so too did the U.S. Bishops cover up and lie to John Jay researchers about the number of abuse cases within their dioceses. Based on the bishops’ gross underreporting, people today who Google “Catholic sexual abuse” read that “approximately 4% of Catholic priests who served in the United States between 1950 and 2002 faced credible allegations of sexual abuse.” The truth that the media today fails to report is that the actual percentage of abusive Catholic clergy in the U.S. is around 23-25% (and not 4%). For example, Cardinal Edwin O’Brien, who headed the Archdiocese for the Military Services (AMS) from 1997 to 2007, reported in 2004 that there were just “two [abuse] cases” in the AMS, when in fact, the real number during that 52-year reporting period was over 500. In my own Pennsylvania diocese, the percentage of priests accused of abuse is 25.5% (51 out of 200).
In addition to bishops lying about the high percentage of abusive priests which, according to researchers, stems from the disproportionate number of closeted homosexual bishops, priests, and seminarians, the Pope and the bishops also cover up for prelates like Cardinal Roger Mahony, Archbishop George Lucas, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, Auxiliary Bishop Edward Grosz, and countless others whose accusations against them they claim were “unsubstantiated.” These cover-ups, facilitated by whitewashed Vos Estis investigations in which complicit bishops investigate other corrupt bishops, are similar to Cardinal Robert McElroy’s dismissal of abuse allegations from Richard Sipe in 2016 involving ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
Now that Pope Leo has appointed Maria Montserrat Alvarado, the former President and COO of EWTN News, as the Prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, one should expect more “Fake News” from the mainstream and Catholic media about how Pope Leo and the Bishops are deeply concerned about abuse victims. If they truly were concerned, then they would respond to letters like this linked November 11, 2025, communication from an abuse victim, Lisa Roers, that was written after Pope Francis failed to respond to this heart-wrenching video, “The Prayer of the Prey.”
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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.
There's really only one metric you need to determine whether Leo's Vatican is any different from Bergoglio's: is Rupnik laicised and in prison?
No? Ok, thanks.
Monsignor Gomulka has spoken a hard truth that ought to pierce every conscience charged with the care of souls.
When shepherds who are bound by sacred duty to protect the flock instead shield the wolves among them, they betray both the office they hold and the Lord who will judge them. The cries of the violated — especially the young — rise to Heaven. To answer those cries with fair words while leaving the guilty in place, unpunished and unreformed, is not mercy. It is complicity.
I who once bore the weight of the Apostolic See know that the reform of the Church begins with the reform of her clergy. Where impurity, especially that which preys upon the innocent, is tolerated or concealed, the entire body is corrupted. Statistics may be debated, reports may be softened, and investigations may be entrusted to those already compromised; yet the reality remains: souls are destroyed, faith is extinguished in the hearts of the little ones, and the name of Christ is blasphemed among the nations because of those who ought to have been His purest witnesses.
A true shepherd does not content himself with denouncing the “scourge” while the scourge continues to strike. He removes the offender. He breaks the networks of mutual protection. He restores the fear of God where worldly calculation has taken its place. Anything less is theater.
The blood of the innocent and the tears of the betrayed cry out for justice. Let those who hold authority examine themselves before the judgment seat of Christ, for the measure with which they have measured shall be measured back to them. The Church is not cleansed by silence or by carefully worded statements. She is cleansed by truth, by penance, and by the sword of discipline wielded without respect of persons.
May the Lord raise up shepherds who fear God more than they fear the exposure of scandal, and who love the flock more than they love their own security.
BZ and Semper Fi Brother, have a Blessed day Sir!!!