POPE LEO AND MANY BISHOPS ARE NOT TRULY PRO-LIFE

Clerical sex abuse is also a pro-life issue

As a former diocesan Respect Life Director, I feel compelled to share why I believe that Pope Leo XIV and prelates like Cardinals Blase Cupich, Robert McElroy, Wilton Gregory, and others perceived by many priests to be closeted homosexuals are psychologically incapable of being truly pro-life. To understand why Pope Leo recently equated abortion with the death penalty and immigration, one has to look very closely at the formation of Leo and other clerics accused of engaging in or covering up clerical sexual predation and homosexual misconduct. Recall that Cardinal Robert Prevost was one of six of the 133 cardinal electors who participated in the 2025 papal conclave against whom the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests (SNAP) filed a Vos Estis Lux Mundi complaint, alleging that he covered up sex abuse both in Chicago and his diocese of Chiclayo in Peru.

Why has no one addressed how clerics who cover up the abuse of children and vulnerable adults appear to be less inclined to be disturbed by the killing of innocent unborn children? Isn’t clerical sexual abuse also a violation of the Catholic Church’s pro-life teaching about the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death?

When I developed the Respect Life Program for the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, six years before Cardinal Joseph Bernardin popularized the “Seamless Garment“ doctrine in 1984, I wanted to promote respect for life both positively and broadly from conception to natural death. I did not want to undertake a narrow negative campaign that the media might characterize as “anti-abortion.” Consequently, I was able to get my friend and parishioner, Penn State University coach Joe Paterno (whose son, David, was my altar boy, and whose daughter, Mary Kay, was in my CCD class), to make the following television and radio spot in which he said, “Every human life needs love and deserves respect. The unborn, the elderly, the mentally and physically handicapped, the sick, and the dying. I believe human life is sacred, and I invite you to respect life.”

When I was criticized by a priest in our diocesan newspaper for being too outspoken on the topic of abortion, a woman whom I counseled sent a letter to the editor in my defense, stating how she suffered for years after having had an abortion. Having written that I was a compassionate confessor who helped to change her life, she compared me to Christ who said to the woman caught in adultery, “Go in peace and sin no more” (Jn 8:11). Many Catholics are justifiably scandalized that Pope Leo appears to side with pro-LGBTQ prelates like Cupich who do not have a problem giving holy communion to those who engage in abortion or homosexual acts under the guise of “mercy” without requiring conversion on their part.

Many Catholics are misled by journalists like John Allen, the editor of Crux, who, in a recent article, attempted to portray Leo as pro-life despite his recent remarks about the award Cupich was going to bestow upon pro-abortion, pro-LBGTQ, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin. Allen argued that, unlike in the U.S., “media cultures in most other parts of the world…didn’t really make much of the pope’s ‘pro-life’ analysis at all.”

Neither Allen nor Leo has drawn a connection during this entire debate between abortion and clerical sex abuse, which, I argue, is an important pro-life issue. No country in the world has reported and prosecuted clerical sexual abusers more than the U.S. When one looks at lists of credibly accused bishops and priests throughout the world, one discovers that criminal and civil charges have not been brought against predator clergy in many countries, like in the U.S. The prosecution of these predators has led over 40 dioceses and religious orders to file for bankruptcy. Although the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) would like people to believe that the Catholic Church in the U.S. has spent $5 billion on abuse settlements and legal fees, the actual number is easily between $10 billion and $22 billion.

In identifying clerical sex abuse as an even more important pro-life issue than immigration, capital punishment, and climate change, it should be noted that Pope Leo has yet to meet with abuse victims since his papal election. Could it be that perceived homosexual Church leaders like Leo, McElroy, Cupich, and others support pro-abortion and pro-LBGTQ politicians and actors like Dick Durbin and Arnold Schwarzenegger because their sexual orientation, often the result of grooming while they were in the seminary, greatly influences their beliefs, teaching, preaching, and ministry?

Insofar as gays and lesbians believe that “LGBTQ rights and abortion rights are inseparable,” and because most American-born clergy and nuns today are gays and lesbians, one should not be surprised when they voice opinions like Leo did the past week. How many Catholics have left the Church because they are tired of hearing closeted bishops and priests preach about climate change, support for illegal immigration, persistent racism, and discrimination against members of the LGBTQ community? Leo and many bishops and priests blamed the Annunciation Church shooting in Minneapolis on gun control, while ignoring the fact that it was carried out by a troubled self-identified Catholic transgender. Many Evangelical Protestant pastors, on the other hand, addressed how children are physically and emotionally scarred from surgeries, grown men and women bear the psychological burdens of hormonal therapy, and transgender individuals are affirmed in their gender dysphoria instead of being helped or treated.

In order to understand where Leo, McElroy, Cupich, and other Catholic prelates are coming from, one has to go back to their formation. Just as one might become an alcoholic or a spouse abuser if one grew up in a home with an alcoholic or abusive parent, so too do clerics who were groomed and abused in the seminary tend to become closeted homosexuals who often are not outspoken in denouncing the killing of unborn children. Even though almost 100 high school seminarians were reported to have been abused at St. Anthony’s Seminary in Santa Barbara, one cannot, without proof, suggest that Pope Leo was groomed at St. Augustine high school seminary in Michigan by Father Nelson Daniel Rupp who reportedly took students to a cottage where he “supplied them with liquor, and then sexually abused them.”

Pope Leo has spoken favorably of Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin whose “seamless garment” teaching linked, in “a consistent life ethic,” moral issues like abortion and euthanasia with social issues like poverty, war, and the environment. Leo appears to be endorsing Bernardin’s doctrine by assigning equal values to issues like the death penalty, immigration, the environment, and abortion.

Having consulted with the late Richard Sipe who interviewed seminarians alleged to have been preyed upon by Bernardin, and having spoken myself with a male and female victim who also alleged being abused by Bernardin, I cannot help but question if Leo and other pro-LBGTQ bishops may have been groomed by someone like Bernardin as a seminarian. Even though one cannot argue that a groomed seminarian will necessarily attempt to groom other young men after he is ordained, I have yet to meet one priest credibly accused of homosexual predation who himself was not groomed and abused.

Researchers like Richard Sipe and Randy Engel, the author of The Rite of Sodomy: Homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church, have looked very carefully at relationships they traced historically involving prelates like McCarrick, Barry Knestout, and Michael Bransfield (all who were reported in court documents to have been present at McCarrick’s beach house the evening a seminarian reported being sexually assaulted); Bernardin, Wilton Gregory, and Daniel Pilarczyk; as well as John R. Quinn, McElroy, and Cupich. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò also questioned the sexual orientation of many of these same bishops, including Pope Francis, in his 2018 “Testimony.” After reading the works of Engel and Sipe, one can understand what Sipe meant in his April 2008 “Open Letter to Pope Benedict XVI” when he spoke about how seminarians and priests, seduced “by highly-placed clerics,” are led “to pass the tradition on - to have sex with each other and even with minors.”

With countless closeted homosexual bishops and priests found guilty of engaging in and covering up sexual abuse after many of them were themselves groomed and abused, one should not expect them to be truly pro-life by drawing a connection between the killing of unborn children and the abuse of minors and vulberable adults which not only harms the body, but also kills the spirit of victims, often moving some to take their own lives.

Only eight out of over 150 Catholic bishops credibly accused of abuse and sexual misconduct have been laicized to date. I don’t believe Pope Leo and bishops are truly pro-life if they engage in or cover up abuse. Nor do I think that Leo can claim to be pro-life if he fails to discipline bishops who engage in abuse, cover up abuse, or reprise against those who report abuse.

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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.