WHY PRIESTS ABUSE AND POPES AND BISHOPS COVER UP

Exposing causes ignored by most media

In the 2000 movie, Keeping the Faith, Ed Norton stars as a young New York priest, Father Brian Finn, who finds himself falling in love with Anna Riley, played by Jenna Elfman. When Norton asks his pastor, Father Havel, if he was ever in love, Havel responds, “About once every decade.” If your bishop or priest cannot identify how he was “close to falling in love with a woman” before or after his ordination, chances are that he’s not heterosexual.

Although many homosexuals like to argue that they were born that way, I have yet to meet one priest who was caught engaging in homosexual predation, in most cases with teenage boys, who himself was not sexually groomed/abused around that same age. Having investigated and aided in the prosecution of five priests guilty of homosexual predation (one who is serving a 30-year sentence), and one pedophile priest who abused two prepubescent children (who received a 12-year sentence), I believe I could have become a predator myself had it not been for my brother.

When I was in eighth grade, after having been an altar boy since the third grade, I was inspired by the ministry and prayerfulness of our young associate pastor, Father Bernard Przybocki. One evening, while having supper, I asked my parents if I could enter the minor (high school) seminary in Orchard Lake, Michigan where Father Bernard had studied. When I raised this question, my brother, home on leave from the Navy, opined that I was too young to decide what I wanted to do with my life, especially if it meant forgoing getting married and having a family. My parents agreed with my brother and recommended that I put off pursuing a vocation to the priesthood until after I graduated from high school.

While I enrolled in Bishop McCort High School where I made friends with students whom I still keep in touch with today, two boys around my age from our diocese did enter high school seminaries in Orchard Lake and Baltimore at that time. Both of them were ordained and later served with me in a parish, one for three years and one for two years. Both of those priests were reported decades later to have groomed/abused teenage boys. Because they interpreted the grooming gay sex acts they were introduced to in the seminary during their period of psychosexual development as acts of love and friendship, they did not perceive that they were sexually abusing the boys upon whom they preyed. I cannot help but wonder if I would have been turned into a sexual predator like them had my brother not been on leave from the Navy which resulted in me attending a co-ed high school, very different from the all male environment of high school seminaries often staffed by homosexual priests.

St. Anthony Seminary in Santa Barbara, California, is currently facing around 100 lawsuits from former seminarians which has caused the Franciscan Friars to file for bankruptcy which will prevent the survivors from telling their traumatic and heart breaking stories under oath. In 2012, 27 Franciscan priests and brothers who staffed the seminary from the Province of Santa Barbara were identified as sexual predators.

Not all homosexual priests who prey on teenagers or vulnerable adults get caught and removed from ministry. While most clerical abuse victims do not report their abuse for a variety of reasons, those who report it often do so only decades later. Many victims suffer from drug addiction, alcoholism, and some even commit suicide. Most never develop the ability to enter into fulfilling and loving heterosexual relationships. Even those who do marry often find their marriage relationships problematic, often requiring therapy to prevent them from ending in divorce.

It is no secret that the Catholic Church has been plagued with countless abuse cases, over 80% of which have involved male victims. This predatory behavior has resulted in over forty dioceses and religious orders filing for backruptcy. This has all come to pass because Church leaders ordained countless homosexual candidates who were groomed/abused and who went on to be ordained in order to live in the closet as priests, bishops, and even popes without people, especially their family and friends, knowing of their sexual orientation and behavior. While not all homosexual clergy are predators, especially those who realize that they were indeed abused, a benchmark survey on homosexuality in the United States showed that 73 percent of homosexuals acknowledge having preyed on adolescents or younger boys.

Owing to gross underreporting on the part of U.S. bishops, the percentage of American-born abusive priests is around 25%, and not 4% as erroneously reported by the USCCB-funded John Jay Study. In my Pennsylvania diocese, for example, 51 out of 200 diocesan and religious order priests were credibly accused of abuse, with over 80% of the cases involving male victims. Had I studied at a high school seminary, might I be number 52?

While the existence of homosexual seminary cultures helps to explain why there are so many clerical sex abuse cases, it’s also important to know why so much abuse has been covered up, and continues to be covered up. Imagine, for example, had I gone off to a high school seminary, been groomed, and then become not only a closeted homosexual priest, but also a bishop, might I be inclined to cover for other closeted clerics like myself? If I were made an archbishop, a cardinal, or even elected the pope, might I also be inclined to promote other closeted bishops like myself?

The media reported a Vos estis lux mundi complaint filed by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) against Cardinal Robert Prevost for covering up the abuse of three women in his Peruvian Diocese of Chiclayo. SNAP claimed that “Pope Leo XIV has a history of mishandling cases of sexual abuse committed by priests.” What the media, including The Washington Post, has not reported is how Pope Leo promoted Washington Cardinal Robert McElroy, knowing that he not only covered up abuse in San Diego, but that he is currently covering up abuse allegations by former seminarians against two of his priests, Fathers Adam Park and Carter Griffin. Leo also has yet to investigate and discipline recently retired Omaha Archbishop George Lucas whom Lisa Roers accused of covering up her abuse and of committing several other immoral acts cited in a New York State Supreme Court lawsuit, a St. Louis lawsuit, and reported in the documentary: Clerical Orgies: The Rome Connection.

As long as the Lavender Mafia remains in power following the death of Pope Francis and continues to permit the ordination of homosexuals who are promoted to the highest positions of authority in the Church, one should not be surprised that only eight out of 150 bishops credibly accused of abusing minors and vulnerable adults have been laicized to date.

Many heterosexuals who appreciate that, “The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone’,” (Genesis 2:18) may find it sad that groomed and abused bishops and priests live “in the closet” and go through life on this Earth without experiencing feelings of love for a woman. Although most high school seminaries are now closed, until the Church sees the election of an inspiring heterosexual pope, the acceptance, ordination, and promotion of homosexuals will continue to cause serious problems in the United States, Ireland, Germany, Brazil, and several other countries where the majority of the clergy today are closeted homosexuals.

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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.