RICO LAWSUIT CALLED FOR AGAINST VATICAN AND U.S. BISHOPS

Sex Trafficked Catholic Seminarians and Abuse Victims Seek Justice

U.S. Bishops like Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop Timothy Broglio, Bishop Mark Seitz, and others have spoken out against President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance who are deporting criminal immigrants and securing the borders in an effort to lower crime; to reduce high drug overdose deaths; and to lessen the chances of a major terrorist attack. After having received $2.9 billion from the Biden Administration to traffic illegals throughout the country, these same bishops are now complaining that the Trump Administration has cut off funding to Catholic Charities which has played a key role in creating the greatest humanitarian disaster in U.S. history.

What no mainstream or Catholic media outlet has reported is how the Catholic Church in the U.S. has a history of sex trafficking immigrants while getting paid for it often with federal and state funds. Wieslaw Jonathan Walawender from Poland received an F-1 foreign student Visa to study for the priesthood at Christ the King Seminary near Buffalo, NY. The handsome and fit seminarian’s education was funded by the government, just like public grade school and high school students. Upon being accepted to study in the U.S., Walawender questioned why he was photographed from the front, the side, and the back. When told that it would help seminary officials recognize him when he cleared customs, he wondered why he needed to be identified from behind. Unfortunately for Jonathan, he was later drugged and sodomized by his supervisor, Monsignor Edward Staub, the pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church in Severna Park, MD. Fearful that he might report Staub who assaulted him, and Baltimore Cardinal William Keeler who covered up the assault, Jonathan was dismissed by church officials and offered a one-way ticket back to Poland while the people in the parish were told that he left to return home where he had a girlfriend that he intended to marry.

The assault that Walawender experienced in Baltimore was similar to the abuse another Polish foreign seminarian, Ryszard Biernat, experienced in the Buffalo Diocese at the hands of Father Art Smith. Biernet was threatened by Auxiliary Bishop Edward Grosz, himself accused of abuse, to keep quiet about the criminal assault or be deported back to Poland, never to be ordained. While Biernat kept his mouth shut and was later ordained, he was later thrown into the street like Walawender after he leaked audio recordings to the media which showed how disgraced Bishop Richard Malone covered up the abuse of several priests. Biernat ended up working as a maintenance man while Walawender got a job working as a truck driver. Neither of them​ has been restored to ministry by the current complicit Ordinaries, Baltimore Archbishop William Lori​, and Buffalo Bishop Michael Fisher, both who continue to cover up the abuse covered up by their predecessors.

Not all sex-trafficked foreign seminarians remain in formation long enough to be groomed and abused by gay faculty members, supervisory pastors, or seminarians. Various groups of Columbian seminaries were sex trafficked by prelates like Paterson Bishop Arthur Serratelli and Hartford Archbishop Henry Mansell beginning when he was the Bishop of Buffalo. Father Joseph Gatto, the rector of Christ the King Seminary near Buffalo, also played an important role in their recruitment. One of the twelve former Colombian seminarians who studied at Christ the King currently resides in Florida. He reported leaving Buffalo after having been sodomized by the Vocation Director so badly that he required surgery to repair his anus. Neither he nor any of the other sex-trafficked Colombians - some straight and some gay - were ever ordained. Most chose to remain in the U.S., and many enlisted in the military as a path to citizenship.

Predator gay bishops and priests take advantage of foreign young men who often don’t have the money, connections, or even language skills to expose their grooming and abuse experiences. This happened in the case of two Hispanics who reported being sexually abused by Omaha Archbishop George Lucas when he was ​in St. Louis, MO, and later in Springfield, IL.

Lucas was accused in St. Louis of having abused a former Hispanic seminarian when he was the vice-rector of St. Louis Preparatory Seminary from 1982 to 1987. He was also accused by another Hispanic, Tomás Muñoz, of having engaged in anal sex with Father Peter Harman at a clerical orgy in his Springfield episcopal residence. Muñoz’s testimony that he was paid $300 by Lucas to participate in that orgy was found credible by a former Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI. The former SAC reported in sworn affidavits to ​the New York Supreme Court that he found the allegations to be “overwhelmingly steeped in precedent, credible, and supported by documentary evidence.”

A Vos Estis Lux Mundi complaint was filed recently against Lucas for engaging in homosexual behavior with clergy and laity in the Springfield Diocese; abusing a high school seminarian; covering up the sexual abuse of Cynthia Yesko by two of his Springfield diocesan priests; and failing to properly investigate the satanic ritual abuse of Lisa Roers who reported being sexually abused by Father Dennis Hanneman from 1972-74 when she was 9-11 years. Like most Vos Estis complaints against bishops that are almost always ruled “unsubstantiated,” the Apostolic Nuncio, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, in a letter dated 23 December 2024, wrote that he was “archiving” the case against Lucas. It would appear that “archiving” is a euphemism for “covering up” the complaint as Pierre never explained why a second girl reported by Roers to have been abused by Hanneman was never contacted or interviewed.

Both Vatican officials and the U.S. bishops do not want U.S. government officials or lay Catholics to know how the sex trafficking of foreigners has filled church coffers and fed the sexual appetites of bishops and priests in Buffalo, Baltimore, St. Louis, Springfield, Hartford, and countless other dioceses. Pope Francis, the Papal Nuncio, and many U.S. bishops, including Cardinal Robert McElroy who will soon be installed as the Archbishop of Washington, do not want the Trump Administration looking into what they have been covering up over the years lest it lead the Department of Justice (DOJ) to file a federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) lawsuit as already has happened in the Diocese of Buffalo. The more the bishops attempt to defend their trafficking of illegal immigrants, including 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children, the more they open themselves up to discovery by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the new Attorney General, Pam Bondi, who will not fail to prosecute abusive bishops and priests as Kamala Harris failed to do when she was the District Attorney of San Francisco.

Abused sex trafficked foreign seminarians like Walawender and Biernat; Hispanics like Muñoz and the former Colombian seminarians; as well as abuse victims like Lisa Roers, Cynthia Yesko, and Rachel Mastrogiacomo whose abuse was covered up by Cardinal McElroy, pray that President Trump and Vice President Vance will not just cut off federal funding, but will put bishops and priests who engage in or cover up abuse behind bars.

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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.