THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION AND THE U.S. BISHOPS

“The model of a criminal organization, not my church.”

President Donald Trump won the Catholic vote posting the strongest performance among Catholics for a Republican nominee since Ronald Reagan. According to an exit poll from The Washington Post, Catholics backed Trump over failed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris by a landslide margin of 15 points. Catholics, who comprised 22% of the 2024 electorate, broke for Trump – with 56% voting for the former president compared to 41% who backed Harris. Trump’s vote share of Catholics was only six points short of the 62% by which he won Protestants, largely a traditional Republican voting bloc. While the majority of Catholic laity backed Trump, the same was not true for most U.S. bishops and left-leaning Catholics.

Unlike former President Joe Biden who sacrilegiously received holy communion while promoting the killing of unborn children; passed himself off as a good Catholic because he carried a rosary in his pocket; and witnessed same-sex marriages which the Catholic Church views as immoral and against the natural law; President Trump, two weeks after his inauguration, called for a renewed focus on faith in America, acknowledging the essential role of religion in the nation’s history and attributing his survival of an assassination attempt to divine intervention.

While Catholics make up 17.7 % of the world population and 22% of the U.S. population, the new 119th Congress has 150 Catholics representing just over 28% of the Senate and House of Representatives. Many key figures surrounding President Trump are Roman Catholic including his wife, The First Lady, Melania Trump; Vice President JD Vance; White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt; director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Tom Homan, and several others.

It is ironic that President Trump, a non-Catholic, seems to be promoting and supporting more authentic Catholic interests and teachings during the short period since his election than Pope Francis, the U.S. Bishops, and self-identified “Catholic” Joe Biden, had done for years. The administration is promoting choice in education; has rolled back federal support for gender transitions; supports the Church’s teaching that every human person is created in the image and likeness of God, male or female (Gen. 1:26-27); is requiring NGOs and foreign agencies receiving U.S. aid to certify that they don’t provide or promote abortion; and is following ”ordo amoris” or” order of love,” a concept endorsed by Catholic saints like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Vice President Vance, a recent Catholic convert, explained “ordo amoris”on Fox News when he said,“You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country.” Vance claimed that the “far left” has inverted that.

David Hollenbach, a Jesuit theologian and professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, accused Vance of misinterpreting Aquinas by citing Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. Dr. Jules Gomes, a Cambridge educated biblical scholar, supports Vance’s interpretation and has criticized Catholic and Protestant progressives for hijacking and “canonizing the Good Samaritan as the patron saint of illegal immigration.”

For decades Roman Catholics were set apart from mainline Protestants by their strong, outspoken pro-life stance and their view that homosexual behavior is a violation of biblical teachings grounded in the natural and divine laws. In an effort to promote respect for human life from conception to natural death, Catholics, along with many Evangelical Protestants, staffed pregnancy service centers; participated in the annual National March for Life; and demonstrated in front of Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics. Even though former President Joe Biden passed himself as being “Catholic,” he had his Attorney General, Merrick Garland, and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) bring charges against more than 30 people who took part in pro-life demonstrations under the FACE Act. Despite the fact that many of the imprisoned pro-lifers later identified by President Trump as “persecuted Christians” were Roman Catholics, not one of the almost 300 U.S. Catholic Bishops advocated for their release like Pope Francis and the bishops asked Biden to pardon death row inmates including five child murderers. It was mainly lay Catholics who were members of organizations like the Thomas More Society, a public-interest law firm, who were successful in getting President Trump to pardon 23 pro-life activists the day before the March for Life.

President Trump recorded a message from The Oval Office to march participants, declaring, “We will again stand proudly for families and for life.” Unlike former President Biden who ignored the March for Life during his four years in office, Vice President Vance joined marchers and proudly announced, "Our country faces the return of the most pro-family, most pro-life American president of our lifetimes." Just as few bishops criticized Biden for his pro-abortion stance, so too were few bishops reported for having thanked Trump and Vance for their pro-life support.

It is no secret that Pope Francis and most U.S. prelates like Cardinal Robert McElroy, Cardinal Blase Cupich, Cardinal Wilton Gregory, Archbishop George Lucas, and others are perceived to be closeted homosexuals. Because most gays and lesbians believe that “LGBTQ and abortion rights are inseparable,” it follows why these same-sex-attracted bishops are more concerned about environmental issues and blessing same-sex couples than speaking out on behalf of unborn children and pro-lifers imprisoned by Biden’s DOJ. Because these homosexual clerics are not as disturbed as heterosexual clerics with the killing of unborn children, it should also not come as a surprise that they have shown no hesitation in giving holy communion to pro-abortion politicians who claim to be “Catholic” like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.

The ethnic face and sexual orientation of the Catholic priesthood has changed considerably over the past 75 years, particularly in the Americas and Europe. The closure of most high school seminaries when boys were recruited to study for the priesthood before they discovered girls; the sexual revolution in the 1960s; and the Internet all have had a major impact on the recruitment and retention of heterosexual seminarians and priests. Unlike in the 1950s when most priests and bishops in the U.S. were heterosexuals, over 80% of U.S. born bishops, priests, and seminarians today are homosexually or bisexually oriented. A 2012 study of actively ministering or retired priests in the U.S. revealed that 26.9% of the priests identified themselves as heterosexuals; 67.3% self-identified as gay/homosexual; and 5.8% reported that they were bisexual. Since that study was undertaken around 13 years ago, the percentage of homosexual and bisexual priests has continued to rise.

While some U.S. bishops were homosexuals before studying for the priesthood, many candidates without prior sexual or emotional heterosexual love experience were groomed and abused in the seminary by gay rectors, faculty members, and fellow seminarians. Once they succumbed to their sexual advances and discovered they had become homosexuals and could not enter into heterosexual relationships, they felt compelled to become ordained and stay in the Church where they could live comfortable closeted lives. While thousands of “turned” seminarians went on to groom and abuse male teenage parishioners as court records show, other homosexual bishops and priests pose no threat to teenage boys and only participate in consensual sex with other clerics or even non-clerics as was reported in the case of Grindr Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, the former General Secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Many priests who were groomed by homosexual clerics when they were in the seminary often do not view what happened to them as sexual abuse, but as physical acts of love and friendship. A seminarian who forms a long-term friendship and engages in an ongoing sexual relationship with a seminary faculty member or pastor who later is made a bishop often may find himself later serving as a bishop’s secretary, a seminary rector, a director of vocations, a vicar general, or even an auxiliary or diocesan bishop. With so few U.S. born straight priests in ministry today, homosexual bishops do not have to worry much about being outed or reported for sexual predation and homosexual misconduct like Omaha Archbishop George Lucas. After being reported in 2005 for engaging in anal sex with Father Peter Harman at a clerical orgy in Springfield, Illinois, Lucas was later reported in 2024 for sexually assaulting an Hispanic high school seminarian at St. Louis Preparatory Seminary in the late 1980s when the alleged abuse occurred. Both of these charges, along with charges that he covered up the sexual abuse of Cynthia Yesko by two Springfield priests and the satanic ritual abuse of Lisa Roers in Omaha were all covered up by the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Cardinal Christophe Pierre.

One other issue that separates heterosexually and homosexually oriented Catholic clergy from one another is illegal immigration. Tyler Bishop Emeritus Joseph Strickland and Arlington Bishop Michael Burbidge, both perceived to be pro-life, pro-family heterosexuals, have spoken out in support of President Trump’s efforts to secure our country’s borders, deport criminal illegal immigrants, and promote legal immigration. Pope Francis, Cardinal McElroy, and other prelates thought to be closeted homosexuals have attacked efforts to defund organizations like Catholic Charities that were paid handsomely by the Biden administration to traffic illegal immigrants throughout the country. The two largest recipients of these funds were Catholic Charities, which secured $2.6 billion, and the USCCB itself, which received nearly $1.6 billion. Geographically, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., led the way with $1.6 billion, followed by the Diocese of Fort Worth with nearly $1 billion.

San Diego Cardinal McElroy who opposes deporting illegal immigrants will be installed as the Archbishop of Washington on March 11, 2025. Like Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde who lectured President Donald Trump at the Washington National Cathedral about “gay, lesbian, and transgender children” and “illegal immigrants,” McElroy likewise can be expected to champion LBGTQ and immigrant rights. While Budde earned $53 million in 2023 from various taxpayer-funded government programs to support illegal immigrants, McElroy received $21,598,261.00 in 2024 plus $39 million in Shelter and Services Program (SSP) money.

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan who denounced Vance’s remarks about illegal immigration as “scurrilous” and “nasty” was criticized, along with other U.S bishops, for amassing $1.4 billion in taxpayer-backed coronavirus aid, with many millions going to dioceses that have paid huge settlements or sought bankruptcy protection because of clergy sexual abuse cover-ups. According to The Associated Press (AP), “The church’s haul may have reached -- or even exceeded -- $3.5 billion, making a global religious institution with more than a billion followers among the biggest winners in the U.S. government’s pandemic relief efforts.” Dolan has also been criticized for leaving New York priests like Monsignor John Paddack, Monsignor Thomas Derivan, Father Donald Timone, Father George Sears, and others in ministry despite being accused of abuse or being named in sex abuse lawsuits.

The criticism Trump and Vance received from Dolan and other bishops is reminiscent of the way then-Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney criticized Governor Frank Keating in 2003 when he was the Chairman of the National Review Board. Frustrated by attempts on the part of bishops to cover up abuse cases that he and the Board were investigating, Keating resigned his position. 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.”

Sex abuse victims’ advocates agree with political strategist Steve Bannon that Cardinal McElroy has “zero moral authority” to lecture President Trump, Vice President Vance, or any member of the administration, especially after having covered up the satanic ritual sexual abuse of Rachel Mastrogiacomo. The abuse of Mastrogiacomo, as well as the sexual abuse of Lisa Roers, reported to the Apostolic Nunciature on September 30, 2024, at 10:35 p.m., was covered up by Cardinal Christophe Pierre who reported “archiving” their complaint in a letter dated 23 December 2024. Victims of clerical sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests have learned that “archiving” a complaint is a euphemism for “covering up” a complaint.

While many states have lifted their statute of limitations for sex abuse cases involving minors, many have not provided legal remedies to victims who were abused as vulnerable adults. Bishops are hiding the fact that the Catholic Church in the U.S. has a history of sex trafficking seminarians. Foreign students like Ryszard Biernat and Wieslaw Walawender from Poland, as well as former seminarians from Columbia and other countries, were threatened to have their visas revoked if they reported how bishops and priests assaulted them, in some cases drugging and sodomizing them while they were passed out.

Devout Catholics are scandalized when they learn from Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that NGOs like Catholic Charities and Catholic Relief Services misused not millions, but billions of dollars on many undertakings that most of them would never approve. The largest recipient of USAID funding under the Biden administration was Catholic Relief Services (CRS) that received $2.6 billion out of the USAID budget that totalled $43.4 billion in fiscal year 2023. The Lepanto Institute and Population Research Institute (PRI) conducted a joint investigation into CRS projects in three African countries which documented how they promoted pornographic sex education, contraceptives, and abortifacient drugs and devices. CRS CEO Sean Callahan, who reported that Trump’s cuts would force CRS to begin shutting down programs, failed to mention that his salary is $640,000.00 a year.

Just as many Democrats criticized Musk after he revealed how many billions of dollars were wasted by USAID and other government agencies that were never properly monitored or audited, so too did many U.S. bishops complain when Vice President Vance revealed how the (USCCB) and various Catholic NGOs wasted billions of taxpayers’ dollars on “immigration services” that resulted in the exploitation of over 300,000 missing migrant children for which Catholic Charities alone was paid $449 million. It is incredible that the bishops who failed to speak out when the Biden administration was allowing millions of illegal aliens to unlawfully enter the U.S. now refuse to take responsibility for the humanitarian disaster they helped create.

If many bishops are not concerned for the rights of unborn children, it follows that they may not be troubled about having accepted “billions in blood money” in support of illegal immigration that is responsible for various forms of human suffering and degradation. According to former CIA intelligence officer and Treasury Special Agent, John Cassara, “murder, gang violence, human trafficking, sex trafficking, narcotics trafficking, theft, terrorism, organized crime, torture, rape, assault, kidnapping, corruption, money laundering, various forms of fraud, and environmental crime, all result from illegal immigration.”

The Catholic Church in the United States has raked in billions from the Biden administration for trafficking illegals around the country while covering up hundreds of thousands of cases of clerical sex abuse around the world. Over 150 bishops credibly accused of abusing minors and vulnerable adults have yet to be disciplined by Pope Francis who himself has been accused of both abusing vulnerable seminarians and covering up countless abuse cases despite having said, “It [sex abuse] never happened in my diocese.”

The Trump administration should “drain the swamp” of the institutional Catholic Church by exposing the systematic cover-up of abuse; the systematic sex-trafficking of immigrants including seminarians; and the systematic bankrupting of Catholic dioceses that is ongoing at this very moment under the leadership of evasive and dishonest bishops such as Cardinal Robert McElroy, the newly-appointed Archbishop of Washington; Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich; and so many other corrupt and complicit clergy.

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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.