THE TRUTH ABOUT BERNARDIN AND ‘AGNES’

Exposing clerical sex abuse tag teams

When Pope Francis died in 2025, more than 75% of US Catholics viewed him favorably and consistently gave him positive ratings throughout his papacy. In June 2026, 78% of US Catholics expressed favorable views of Pope Leo. If I have a very unfavorable view of Francis and Leo, it stems from what they did and failed to do, most of which is covered up by the mainstream and Catholic media.

Anyone who watched Sex Abuse in the Church: Code of Silence by French investigative reporter, Martin Boudot, knows that when Pope Francis was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he covered up countless cases of sex abuse despite having lied by writing that clerical sex abuse “never occurred in my diocese.” Imagine a diocese with more than 2.7 million Catholics, and not one abuse case! I would estimate that less than one percent of Catholics in the world were made aware of Francis’ abuse cover-ups, and even less heard or read that he was accused by more than one source of having preyed on Jesuit novices in Argentina. Might this help you understand why I strongly disagree with the favorable ratings Francis received from 75% of US Catholics?

The very high favorability rating Pope Leo enjoys was helped by Pope Leo’s Peru, a one-hour Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) News Special Report that is the antithesis of Boudot’s documentary about “Pope Francis’ Argentina.” Maria Montserrat Alvarado, the former President and COO of EWTN News, was rewarded for her role in making this production possible by being appointed the new Prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication. The production, like much of EWTN’s one-sided reporting, avoided any mention of Leo’s record of mishandling sexual abuse in the Augustinian Order and in the Diocese of Chiclayo.

Having been born in Chicago, Leo was greatly influenced by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, whom Leo has quoted on more than one occasion. There is probably no American prelate who better demonstrates how American Catholics can be duped in their evaluation of a Church leader than Bernardin. Most American Catholics who heard of Bernardin and the sex abuse allegation made by Stephen Cook, a former seminarian, were led to believe that Cook recanted the charges before he died. However, the report that Cook was paid $3 million in hush money in an out-of-court settlement involving Bernardin was corroborated by other sex abuse victims who knew Cook personally, and by abuse advocates like the late Richard Sipe. Why pay someone millions of dollars in a settlement if the victim was lying about being abused?

EWTN and its subsidiary, the Catholic News Agency, along with other Catholic media sources and websites, do not want to scandalize Catholics and lose viewers and readership (along with revenue) by publishing accounts such as the following testimony by one of Bernardin’s victims who swore being abused by both Bernardin and his Charleston Bishop, John Joyce Russell:

In the Fall of 1957, I was taken to a basement room of St. Mary’s Catholic Parish in Greenville, S.C. I was 11 years old and had been confirmed the previous spring. There were several people there, including a German who seemed to be in charge, but a white-haired man was the vested officiant and he attempted to penetrate me. I was able to resist him. I recognized the white-haired man as Bishop Russell and told him that he had confirmed me and shouldn’t do this. I said, “You are the bishop and you should be good.”

They told me my father was bad and my mother was bad, so I was bad. I said that God made me and God was good, so I was good. This made them mad.

I had not noticed Father Joseph Bernardin there but at this point he took me in his lap and said I was a good girl and God was pleased with me. He looked at me warmly and hugged me and I began to cry and relax. Then he raped me, telling me he was putting the devil in me. He followed the rape with a perverted use of a host, placing it on his organ and demanding I take it. I resisted, holding my mouth closed. Someone held my nose so that I had to open my mouth to breathe. I didn’t spit it out because I thought it could be a consecrated Host. Bernardin said that taking it was proof that the devil had control of me.

I knew Father Bernardin because he usually accompanied Bishop Russell, who came frequently to our parish. Very soon after these events, Bishop Russell went to Richmond. In 1961, my family moved out of state.

I was unaware of Bernardin’s rise in the hierarchy. I moved out of the country early ‘83, and it was only when I returned to the States years later that I discovered that the priest I knew as Fr. Bernardin had become a Cardinal.

In the early 1990s, I told what Bernardin had done to Malachi Martin, recommended to me as someone who could safely get the information to the Vatican. Martin wrote a novel. The events are theatricalized in the novel, and the date changed, but the essential fact of ritual rape is present, as is the reality of God’s presence in the victimized child. Martin said the Pope wanted to know what my spiritual experience was as a child, so I told him that I had felt that the words came from God within me when I said that I came from God and was good. He included this detail in the novel. There are several other details in the story of “Agnes” that tell me he is speaking of what happened to me, not someone else. While many want to believe that the events happened just before the Council, they did not. While I don’t doubt that something similar could have happened later to another child, it would not have had the details Martin obtained from me.

Just like Lisa Roers reported Father Dennis Hanneman of satanically abusing her and another little girl in the Archdiocese of Omaha when they were around 10 years old, so too did “Agnes” report her abuse to Church authorities, only to have copies of reports from 1993–1995 covered up by the Chicago Archdiocese. As reported by Church Militant in 2019, a June 1993 letter was found hidden in the secret archives in which “Agnes” wrote, “I was raped by then-Father Bernardin as part of a satanic ritual. He accompanied Bishop Russell, who was the celebrant….Russell had been the patron of Father Bernardin, and I hesitate to think how many [other predators] Bernardin [may have] advanced in the Church and in his brotherhood.” Former Attorney General Lisa Madigan found that Cardinal Blase Cupich and Illinois bishops withheld the names of at least 500 accused clergy, receiving allegations against 690 priests but publicly identifying only 185. Included among the predators whose name was not reported is one Joseph Cardinal Bernardin.

One can only imagine how many millions - perhaps billions - of dollars in abuse settlements the Catholic Church would have to pay out if states like Illinois and Nebraska were to open a “lookback window” on the statute of limitations for sex abuse cases as was done in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and California.

Besides being accused of teaming up with Bishop Russell to abuse “Agnes” in 1957, Bernardin was also accused in a 2023 criminal complaint filed in Wisconsin of joining Theodore McCarrick in abusing James Grein at a home near Geneva Lake in April 1977. As an investigator and abuse victims’ advocate, I am more inclined to believe allegations when they are made by different victims and witnesses like “Agnes,” Cook, and Grein, who reported abuse and homosexual misconduct by Bernardin at different times and places.

This substantiated pattern of abuse also occurred when I helped to convict a predator Catholic chaplain who received a 12-year sentence for abusing a child of a Navy family in Sicily, and later the child of a Marine Corps family in Beaufort, SC. The Chaplain, Father Robert Hrdlicka, pleaded guilty in 1993 to six counts of indecent acts and one count of indecent liberties with a minor. Four brothers from Lincoln, NE, later accused Hrdlicka of abusing them before he became a Navy Chaplain. It was reported that the brothers demanded $2 million from the Lincoln Diocese to keep quiet about their alleged abuse at the hands of Hrdlicka.

The late Richard Sipe and I regret that confidentiality, while allowing us to learn of predatory behavior by clerics like McCarrick, Bernardin, and others, often precludes us from disclosing the identities of the victims. While Cook died of AIDS like so many bishops and priests, “Agnes” was fortunate, like Lisa Roers (whose abuse continues to be covered up by Pope Leo and the Omaha Archdiocese), to marry and have a family. Unfortunately, many abuse victims never marry and become addicted to drugs and alcohol, or even commit suicide.

Bernardin and Russell are not the only clerics accused of working as a “sex abuse tag team.” Shawn Senuta alleges he was sexually abused by Bishops Joseph Maguire and Christopher Weldon when he was 4 or 5 years old while residing at Brightside, a residential institute for children owned and operated by the Springfield (MA) Diocese. Senuta is currently suing the diocese for $10 million.

I can only pity deceased clerics like Francis/Bergoglio, McCarrick, Bernardin, Russell, Maguire, and Weldon, as well as prelates like Leo/Prevost, Fernández, Cupich, McElroy, Knestout, Lori, and others whom I believe, based on evidence I have received from multiple confidential sources, are groomed, narcissistic, closeted, gay frauds. In my opinion, these complicit, closeted homosexuals are no different than the promiscuous and predatory bishops identified in this linked July 28, 2016, letter, written by my late friend, Richard Sipe, whose amazing life is captured in this linked, highly-recommended video, Sex, Lies, and the Priesthood: The Truth and Revelations.

The “bottom line” is that the Catholic Church does not need a Synod and should not be excommunicating tradition-loving clergy and laity who reject the appointment and promotion of closeted, pro-LGBTQ prelates like Freiburg Bishop Christian Würtz and so many others. What the Church really needs is a truly Catholic pope and straight, chaste, faithful Catholic clergy.

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Gene Thomas Gomulka is a sexual abuse victims’ advocate, investigative reporter, author, 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.