THE PRAYER OF THE PREY

Abuse Victims’ Open Letter Video to Pope Francis

 During his recent visit to Belgium, a country whose religious, social, and political life has been greatly influenced by Catholicism, Pope Francis was highly criticized by the king of Belgium and its prime minister over his mishandling of the Church’s appalling legacy of clergy sex abuse and institutional cover-up.  This is not the first time the Belgians have been upset with the Vatican owing to the way Church officials covered up abuse and reprised against those who reported it.

 In 1988 a European Mother Superior sent a complaint to the Vatican reporting that the local African bishop wanted her to make her nuns available to his priests for sex to reduce their chances of contracting HIV from prostitutes and dying of AIDS. Instead of disciplining the bishop and his promiscuous priests, the Vatican returned the complaint to the bishop who then deported the Mother Superior. It was later reported that one of 29 nuns who became pregnant was forced to have an abortion by the priest who raped her. When the nun died during the abortion procedure, it was the rapist priest who conducted her funeral.

When confidential reports alleging numerous cases of sexual abuse of nuns by priests and a failure by church leaders to discipline the clerics came to light, the European Parliament, in April 2001, issued a formal chastisement of the Vatican condemning “all the sexual violations against women, particularly against Catholic nuns.” In addition to demanding that “the perpetrators of the crimes be arrested and handed over to justice,” the Parliament also requested that the Vatican “seriously examine every indication of sexual abuse committed in the heart of its organizations … [and] to re-establish women in their posts in the religious hierarchy who were removed from their responsibilities because they called these abuses to the attention of their superiors.”

Unfortunately, none of the bishops or priests responsible for the rapes and abortions of nuns are known to have been disciplined. Following the 2018 Summer of Shame when Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò requested that Pope Francis resign after covering up for predator Cardinal Theodore McCarrick,  an investigation by the Associated Press (AP) reported how nuns in more than 20 countries across four continents were speaking out about the suffering they endured at the hands of priests, including rape, forced abortion, emotional abuse, and labor exploitation.

One former German nun, Doris Wagner, who was repeatedly raped by a priest in the Vatican, said she almost committed suicide one day when she was high up on a balcony inside the Papal Palace, right in front of the pope.  When nuns like Doris Wagner expose sex abuse and cover-ups in the Church, their abusers often go unpunished while they suffer another form of abuse by either being silenced or expelled from the convent.

It is in this historical context that Pope Francis was reported to have gotten “an earful from the Belgian King and abuse victims over scandals and failure to respond.” While many U.S. mainstream media sources reported that Belgian abuse survivors wrote an open letter to Francis, many of those same sources never responded to a request from two U.S. survivors to report on their open letter video to the Pope which they entitled, “The Prayer of the Prey.”  

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) reported how just weeks earlier during a visit to Oceania, Pope Francis did not respond to an open letter requesting that he apologize for the child sexual abuse perpetrated by his clergy and hold his bishops and congregational leaders accountable for enabling that abuse.

Owing to the Pope’s historical failure to discipline predator clergy and to cover up abuse dating back to when he was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, many sex abuse victims’ advocates question if the Pope, despite promises he made in Belgium, will actually respond to the open letter video sent to him by the two U.S. abuse victims, Lisa Roers and Rachel Mastrogiacomo.

Roers, who alleges being ritually abused in Nebraska when she was 9-11 years old, requested that her case be thoroughly investigated and that Omaha Archbishop George Lucas be disciplined for both engaging in sexual misconduct and for covering up abuse that she and others suffered. Mastrogiacomo, who was also a victim of satanic ritual abuse as a vulnerable adult and who is aware of the fact that Pope Francis has neither laicized nor excommunicated some 150 bishops credibly accused of abusing minors and vulnerable adults, wrote, “The Catholic Church needs a Holy Father who will restore the Church’s moral credibility by ‘cleansing the Temple’ of those who engage in satanic ritual abuse and all forms of clerical sexual predation.”  

The open letter video can be viewed on YouTube at: “The Prayer of the Prey.”

The text of the letters can be read at: Abuse Survivors Open Letters to Pope Francis.

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.  Follow Gene Gomulka on YouTube or email him at msgr.investigations@gmail.com.