THE SPLINTERING BARQUE OF PETER

If thousands of McDonald’s franchises closed throughout the US after 30 million customers announced they were no longer eating at McDonald’s, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and many other executives would probably lose their jobs while a study was undertaken to determine the main cause for the decline in customers and revenue.  The recent exodus of over 30 million believers from the Catholic Church has yet to meet the same reaction from prelates who are hiding the real reasons why so many are splintering away to join a growing sect of “former Catholics.”  While the hemorrhage is often blamed on a loss of faith in the Eucharist or liturgical changes implemented after the Second Vatican Council, some scholars argue that the bishops are burying a far more incriminating reason which, if revealed, may out their darkest secrets.  The truth is that clergy sex abuses, covered up by a closeted Pope and a vastly homosexual episcopate, are scandalizing souls who are craving authenticity instead of hypocrites who lie and bend doctrine to excuse their own sex lives.

Dr. Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, an eminent Dutch psychologist, has diagnosed Pope Francis as being "afflicted by one or another form of same-sex attraction."  Observing how Francis has used the Chair of Peter to advocate for gay relationships in unprecedented ways, Aardweg contends that Francis has "a significant personal stake" in normalizing homosexuality despite findings that over 80 percent of clergy abuse victims were young men.  Aardweg describes why Francis and so many other closeted bishops who themselves are accused of sexually abusing other males are so invested in the homosexual agenda, writing: "The power of the dramatic crave to seek male affection, its attraction, is overwhelming, becoming 'the meaning of my life' to the sufferer of same-sex attraction.”

Aardweg’s assessment is corroborated by an Argentine Jesuit who, while working at a parish in a midwestern archdiocese in 2015, told two American priests at dinner that he received an eyewitness account of then-Father Jorge Bergoglio sodomizing a Jesuit novice positioned on a chair in Córdoba. Accusations of Bergoglio’s reported homosexual antics involving seminarians would resurface almost 10 years later when Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò wrote: “Bergoglio himself committed the same abuses [as McCarrick] when he was Master of Novices of the Society of Jesus in Argentina, as personally confided to me by one of his former novices.”

Francis is only one of a number of homosexual popes presiding over a Church bleeding membership. Pope Julius III, who was in office (1550-1555) during the Protestant Reformation (1517-1648), “shared [his] bedroom and bed” with 15-year-old Innocenzo Ciocchi Del Monte whom he made a cardinal at the age of 17.  Some five centuries later, Francis is following in his predecessor’s footsteps by rewarding gay Churchmen like Monsignor Battista Ricca who is in charge of the papal residence; Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández who heads the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith; and Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio who attended a drug-fueled gay orgy fifteen months after Francis’ election.  Ricca, Fernández, and Coccopalmerio join other gay clerics who comprise an estimated 80 percent of all priests working at the Vatican.

While most people blame the Protestant Reformation on individuals like Martin Luther, Florentine Cardinal Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, an active homosexual who reigned as Pope Leo X  1513 to 1521 may have been even more responsible than Protestant reformers for millions of Catholics leaving the Church in the 16th century.  Luther is widely anathemized as a controversial cleric who challenged Catholic doctrine, but few realize that Luther also sought reform of clerical corruption and abuses that were scandalizing the Faithful.  Experts observe that the bishops who gathered at the ensuing Council of Trent (1545-1563) focused heavily on Catholic doctrine and liturgy, but not one document produced during the Council’s eighteen-year existence specifically cited “homosexual behavior” as a serious problem in the priesthood.  Just as the 16^th-century bishops steered clear of incriminating homosexual Popes Leo X and Julius III by omitting the word “homosexuality” from treatises on clerical reform, so too would Francis and the bishops attending the 2019 Vatican Abuse Summit drop the word “homosexuality” from the agenda despite findings that “the major cause of the crisis was the homosexual abuse of males.”  The striking omission led some journalists covering Francis’ Summit to quip that homosexuality is “the most talked about non-topic at the Vatican.”

Some five hundred years after Leo X and Julius III, another gay Pope is enjoying cover while whistleblowers are silenced like Archbishop Viganò who exposed a “homosexual mafia” in the Church, or Bishop Joseph Strickland who confronted bishops at the November 2018 USCCB meeting for their failure to address the connection between clergy sex abuse and clerical homosexuality.  More Catholics are estimated to have left the Church in the United States, Ireland, and Germany during the current pontificate of Francis than the number of Catholics who converted to Protestantism under Leo X and Julius III.

Pundits who try to convince Catholics that the state of the priesthood is improving are disproven by studies showing how the US has experienced a significant decline in the number of heterosexually oriented priestly vocations during Francis’ pontificate. A 2024 seminary report referencing a 2012 psychological study undertaken the year before Francis was elected documented that 26.9% of US priests identified themselves as heterosexuals. Based on input twelve years later from straight and gay priests throughout the US, the number of straight American-born priests today is estimated to be between 5% and 15%.  These percentages are all the more disturbing given studies showing that 73 percent of homosexuals acknowledged having preyed on adolescents or younger boys and that clergy sex abuse remains an ongoing issue (e.g., between 2019 and 2023, 12,993 victims reported being abused by Catholic clergy).

While complicit prelates and their lackeys at Catholic media outlets keep Catholics in the dark about promiscuous clergy, a growing number of families refuse to entrust new vocations to scandal-plagued bishops like Cardinals  Timothy Dolan and Wilton Gregory; Archbishops George Lucas, Gregory Aymond, and William Lori; all who have a history of abusing or covering up abuse experienced by seminarians.  Other Catholics cannot bring themselves to attend Masses celebrated by “Grindr priests” like Fathers Jeffrey Burrill, Michael Callaghan, and other known homosexual clerics like Washington Father Adam Park who was reported for preying on seminarians at the North American College (NAC) in Rome.

Dr. Jules Gomes, a biblical scholar whose translations of 11th-12th-century Latin texts disclosed concern by some church leaders that the adoption of celibacy could lead to an increase in homosexual clergy, has questioned if Francis' alleged homosexuality may be ushering in “a second season of church-shattering history as it did with Leo X in the 16th century.”  The Church nearly faced schism in 2023 when Francis’ Fiducia supplicans approved blessings for same-sex couples.  Noting how Francis’ successor will be elected by a College of Cardinals packed with homosexual prelates, Gomes predicts that another “Reformation might just be lurking 'round the corner.” 

Catholic historians for centuries have covered up how homosexually active popes like Leo X and Julius III fanned the flames of the Protestant Reformation. Just as many bishops and priests knew for decades that McCarrick was preying on seminarians and young priests, so too do most bishops, priests, and informed Catholics today know that Francis is definitely not heterosexually oriented. In spite of the abundant evidence, Catholic media refuse to acknowledge how the pope’s closeted homosexuality is affecting his questionable moral beliefs, heterodox teachings, and dubious relationships.

The departure of more than 30 million Catholics has left in its wake a rising number of churches which have closed their doors and have since been converted into mosques, restaurants, and bars.  It will take the entire hierarchy, including the Pope, to call out and exorcize the real demons that are driving out the Faithful.  Until then, more Catholics may fall away questioning how they can find themselves at home in the Barque of Peter when its leaders constantly set it afire by their corrupt example.

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, follow him on Substack, or email him at msgr.investigations@gmail.com.