THE LAVENDER MAFIA

Is Pope Leo the newly anointed Godfather?

The events portrayed in The Godfather movies with Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, and Robert De Niro are no different than what has been happening under recent Popes, along with Bishops like Howard Hubbard, Edward Grosz, Robert McElroy, George Lucas, and others. Former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating resigned his position as Chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) National Review Board in 2003, owing to his frustration that the bishops were covering up abuse cases that he and the Board were investigating. 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.”

Unfortunately, not much has changed between 2003 and the present despite efforts on the part of members of the hierarchy, Church organizations, and the Catholic media to argue that “Clergy Sex Abuse in U.S. Virtually Disappears.” In addition to failing to report clerical sex abuse and episcopal cover-ups involving prelates like Washington Cardinal Robert McElroy, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, and others, the Catholic News Agency (CNA), the National Catholic Reporter, America magazine, and other complicit Catholic news outlets and publications also fail to cover stories involving priests and former seminarians who were reprised against for reporting clerical sexual predation and homosexual misconduct.

While whistleblower priests like Buffalo Father Ryszard Biernat and Washington Father Michael Briese were suspended without just cause, and former seminarians like New York Anthony Gorgia and Baltimore Karl Discher were coerced into leaving formation after reporting homosexual predation in their seminaries, some priests were even murdered like Albany Father John Minkler, Madison Father Alfred Kunz, and Buffalo Father Joe Moreno. Interestingly, all three of the murdered priests were in possession of incriminating evidence accusing bishops of engaging in the sexual abuse of minors or vulnerable adults.

Father Minkler wrote a letter to New York’s Cardinal John J. O’Connor in which “he detailed ‘a ring of homosexual Albany priests’ including Bishop Howard Hubbard’s alleged long-term homosexual relationships with two younger priests.” Minkler had been working with Illinois-based Roman Catholic Faithful (RCF) President, Stephen Brady, for three years in order to document homosexual misconduct involving Hubbard and Albany clergy. According to Brady, "Father Minkler was scared to death that the bishop would find out." Brady told Albany’s Times-Union that Minkler left him a voicemail message asking for advice the day before his death.

Minkler’s report about Hubbard is similar to a report about then-Springfield Bishop George Lucas who is identified in court documents to have engaged in anal sex with Father Peter Harman in the presence of other priests, seminarians, and two laymen in his espiscopal residence. One of the lay participants, Tomás Muñoz, reported to Steve Brady that Lucas paid him $300 for coming to the orgy. After Brady reported this to the Apostolic Nuncio in Washington, D.C., both men reported having their lives threatened by Lucas who had the matter covered up by a self-appointed panel before being named the Archbishop of Omaha. Lucas is accused in a May 22, 2025, letter to Pope Leo XIV of covering up the sex abuse of Lisa Roers, and is also currently being sued by a former high school seminarian for sexual abuse dating back to when Lucas was on the faculty of St. Louis Preparatory Seminary.

Father Kunz, a respected canon lawyer, was found with his throat slit in his church in Dane, Wisconsin. Before his death, Kunz, like Minkler, was working with Brady who was investigating Springfield Bishop Daniel Ryan. Like his successor, George Lucas, Ryan was accused of sexual predation with minors and homosexual misconduct with both clergy and gay prostitutes.

Father Moreno was the confessor and spiritual director of former Buffalo Polish seminarian Wieslaw Walawender whom he helped compose letters to Pope John Paul II and to his secretary, then-Monsignor Stanisław Dziwisz, reporting Auxiliary Bishop Edward Grosz for abusing a teenage boy in the Marriott Hotel in Krakow. On Friday, the day before Moreno’s body was found with a bullet to the back of his left ear, Moreno called Walawender and told him he had copies of documents he wanted to give him for safekeeping that he was going to share the following week with the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, in Washington, D.C. Before Moreno was to meet with Walawender on Sunday after his afternoon Mass, however, he was visited by Bishop Grosz with whom he got into an argument. In less than 24 hours later he was found dead in his rectory as documented in “Death of a Whistleblower Priest.” Even though Moreno’s death was ruled a suicide, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that points to him being murdered.

The cover-up of Mareno’s murder is similar to how then-Catholic Erie County District Attorney (DA), John Flynn, covered up facts surrounding a sexual abuse report of Anthony Ravarini sent by Walawender to Buffalo Bishops Edward Head and Grosz. Walawender’s letter of May 9, 1992 to the bishops was written with the help of Father Moreno who was Walawender’s spiritual director and confessor. Flynn, who had never prosecuted one Buffalo priest for abuse, did not question Buffalo diocesan officials who ruled that the semen Walawender reported seeing on the face and shirt of Anthony Ravarini as he was running out of the rectory was his own and not that of Walawender’s supervisory pastor, Father Dennis Riter. The only problem with that ruling, like many problems involving the death of Moreno, was that Ravarini was six and a half years old at the time of the abuse and physically incapable of producing semen. Neither the DA’s Office nor the Buffalo Police ever interviewed Walawender about what he was told by Moreno before his death, or by Ravarini after his sexual abuse.

While priests like Minkler, Kunz, and Moreno are murdered after they were known to have gathered incriminating evidence against Bishops Hubbard, Ryan, and Grosz, all three of whom were reported and later sued for abuse like Archbishop Lucas, whistleblower priests like Father Michael Briese are being eliminated without the expenditure of hiring a hitman. Briese, who confronted Cardinals Wilton Gregory and Robert McElroy for covering up the sexual predation of Father Adam Park, the former secretary to Cardinal Donald Wuerl and vice rector of the North American College (NAC) in Rome, was suspended and reports being without health insurance to cover his medical problems connected to the stress and anxiety he experienced as a result of his unjust suspension. Diagnosed with a heart condition, Briese reported that he cannot afford the heart medication his doctor prescribed which costs over $500 without insurance. This report from a priest who is approaching 70 years old is all the more egregious when one considers the fact that disgraced Cardinal Wuerl was reported to have received over $4 million in “hush money” from Cardinal Gregory, and the Archdiocese recently announced a $50 million deficit over the past five years.

The only one who can thoroughly investigate and discipline prelates like McElroy, Grosz, and Lucas for their above-reported behavior is Pope Leo XIV. After clicking on the links found in this article, if you have a problem with whistleblower priests like Father Briese being denied health insurance, and if you believe the deaths of Fathers Minkler, Kunz, and Moreno need to be thoroughly investigated, I invite you to write to Pope Leo via his Apostolic Nuncio at nuntiususa@nuntiususa.org.

If it turns out that Leo is really the newly anointed “Godfather” of the Lavender Mafia, then one should not expect anything bad to happen to McElroy, Grosz, Lucas, or any of the 150+ bishops credibly accused of abuse. Lest someone say that I killed myself like Joe Marino, or contracted malaria like my late friend George Neumayr, let me assure my readers that I am not suicidal and that, after two decades of service with United States Marines, I will not let some Lavender Mafia hitman take my position without a fight!

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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.