WILL POPES WHO COVER UP ABUSE 'BURN IN HELL?'

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka's prophetic warning to Pope John Paul II about the 'Mafia'

While studying for the priesthood in Rome, I met Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, the Primate of Poland, who introduced me in 1972 to Cardinal Karol Wojtyła of Kraków. Unlike most of the seminarians with whom I lived at the North American College who were unfamiliar with Eastern European history, both Wyszyński and Wojtyła were conscious of the fact that I was the second cousin of Władisław Gomułka, the de facto ruler of Poland from 1956 to 1970.

In 1976, two years following my ordination and two years before his papal election on October 16, 1978, Cardinal Wojtyła traveled to the small town of Pomfret, Vermont, to visit Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, a Polish philosopher and scholar, her husband, Hendrik Houthakker, and their three children. Tymieniecka wrote to Wojtyła in 1973 about undertaking an English translation of his philosophical treatise Osoba i czyn (The Acting Person). For more than three decades, Wojtyła and Tymieniecka corresponded until Pope John Paul II died on April 2, 2005. Tymieniecka died on June 7, 2014, two months after her close friend was canonized on April 27, 2014.

While letters that Pope John Paul II wrote to Tymieniecka, purchased by the National Library of Poland for $3.1 million (11 million Polish złoty), were examined and reported on by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) in 2016, the letters that Tymieniecka wrote to the Pope were only made available recently to investigative reporters Marcin Gutowski and Szymon Żyśko. The content of the letters was discussed on a Black on White (Czarno na Białym) podcast in their TVN24 production, “Over 30 years of correspondence between John Paul II and Anna Teresa Tymieniecka” (Ponad 30 lat korespondencji między Janem Pawłem II a Anną Teresą Tymieniecką). Despite astounding revelations uncovered in Tymieniecka’s letters to the Pope, no U.S. mainstream or Catholic media outlet has yet to report on this hidden treasure.

Media failure to report on the contents of the letters, which address the 2002 sex abuse scandal and characters like Cardinals Bernard Law and Theodore McCarrick, is similar to the U.S. media cover-up of French investigative journalist Martin Boudot’s work, Sex Abuse in the Church: Code of Silence. In his 2017 documentary, Boudot showed how Pope Francis, when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, covered up countless sex abuse cases and failed in his attempt to get the Appellate Court judges to overturn the 15-year prison sentence of Father Julio César Grassi, a convicted ephebophile priest.

The contents of the correspondence between Tymieniecką and Wojtyła would be of great interest to Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who was excommunicated on dubious grounds by Pope Francis. Viganò accused Francis in his August 2018 “Testimony” of covering up for serial sexual predator Theodore McCarrick, just like then-San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy and Pope Francis covered up the incriminating 2016 letter by the late psychotherapist Richard Sipe. In the letter Sipe wrote, “I have interviewed twelve seminarians and priests who attest to propositions, harassment, or sex with McCarrick, who has stated, ‘I do not like to sleep alone’.” But while McElroy told America magazine in November 2018 that he “passed on [Sipe’s letter] to the proper governing bodies in Rome,” he subsequently, in an effort to protect Francis from being accused of covering up for McCarrick, changed his story and flately contradicted himself telling a National Catholic Reporter (NCR) journalist in March 2025 that he “declined to pass along unsubstantiated hearsay allegations,” which is how he described Sipe’s letter.

The idea that these were mere flimsy hearsay allegations bears little scrutiny. A noteworthy New York Times article of November 10, 2020, even stated in its title, “Everyone Knew About Theodore McCarrick.” This fact was corroborated and amplified by Houston-based Catholic Bishop Steven Lopes, who castigated his fellow bishops and cardinals for denying that they knew of disgraced Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s alleged sexual abuse of seminarians and adolescents before it was revealed by Father Boniface Ramsey and Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò in 2018. Lopes stated, “I’ll tell you what response I think is not good enough. It’s the parade of cardinals and bishops who have rushed to the television cameras, clutching their pectoral crosses, saying, ‘I knew nothing’… I don’t believe it, and I am one of them … I was a seminarian when Theodore McCarrick was named Archbishop of Newark. He would visit the seminary often, and we all knew.”

In 2024, just before his excommunication, Viganò also accused Francis of engaging in sexual relations with Jesuit Novices. 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.” Bergoglio’s sexual involvement with novices was corroborated earlier in 2015 by an Argentine priest working in the U.S. who graphically described to two American priests how Bergoglio engaged in sodomy with a novice in Córdoba. Unlike LifeSiteNews and Complicit Clergy, U.S. mainstream and Catholic media covered up the sex abuse allegations while attempting to defend Francis’ excommunication of Viganò on the questionable grounds of “schism.”

I doubt the U.S. mainstream and Catholic media will report on the contents of the correspondence between Tymieniecka and Wojtyła because it would show that “The McCarrick Report,” commissioned by Francis, was a whitewash that attempted to shift blame from Francis to John Paul II. The whitewashed report was prepared by California-based defense attorney Jeffrey Lena, who was retained by the Holy See to exonerate Francis of the cover-up charges made by Viganò. Despite serious omissions, like the July 28, 2016, letter from Richard Sipe, the Report was swallowed by the U.S. mainstream and Catholic media “hook, line, and sinker.”

Pope John Paul II was warned, “You will ‘burn in hell’ if….”

Because Tymieniecka and her family’s main residence was in the Boston suburb of Belmont, they were well informed of The Boston Globe’s 2002 reporting of the clerical sex abuse scandal. As Gutowski pointed out during the Czarno na Białym podcast, Tymieniecka wrote to the pope and said that he would “burn in hell” (spłoniesz w piekle) if he allowed the “Mafia within the current Church administration” (mafii obecnej administracji kościoła) to cover up the ongoing abuse. She urged the pope to discipline not only Law and McCarrick, but opined that several members of the U.S. hierarchy might also be guilty of engaging in or covering up abuse (Law musi ustąpić, a McCarrick też musi ustąpić. Cała nasza hierarchia podejrzana).

The “Mafia” that Tymieniecka addressed in her correspondence was the same corrupt organization identified by Oklahoma Governor Frank Keeting who resigned in 2003 as head of the National Review Board that was charged with overseeing abuse in the Catholic Church in the U.S. Keating wrote, “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.”

In response to his philosopher friend’s admonition, John Paul II, in April 2002, despite being frail from Parkinson’s Disease, summoned all the American cardinals to the Vatican. He discussed possible solutions to the problem, asked the bishops to diligently investigate accusations, suggested the bishops be more open and transparent in dealing with such scandals, emphasised the role of seminary training to prevent sexual deviance among future priests, and, in calling sex abuse “an appalling sin,” said “the priesthood has no room for such men.”

As we now know, two months later, the U.S. bishops met in Dallas, where they chose Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to write the ”Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.“ The Charter exempted bishops from accountability by limiting its scope to priests and deacons. Consequently, countless bishops (Roger Mahoney, Howard Hubbard, George Lucas, John Nienstedt, Nicholas DiMarzio, Edward Grosz, Michael Bransfield, etc.) who were accused of abusing children and vulnerable adults, including seminarians, have never, to this day, been either laicized or excommunicated for their crimes by Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis, or Leo XIV.

Accused predator retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney with Pope Leo XIV. According to Clean the Church, there are “21 certified abuse claims in Los Angeles Superior Court (JCCP5101) which name Mahony as the actual perpetrator of rape, forced oral copulation, and abuse of mostly immigrant teenage boys — claims that were buried in a $880 million settlement to avoid trial.”

Unfortunately, Pope John Paul II was not able at the end of his life to arrest a cancer that he failed to treat as early as 1984, six years after his election. As Jason Berry wrote, “Despite a 1984 warning memo from the Rev. Thomas Doyle, then a canon lawyer in the Vatican Embassy in Washington, and a ninety-three-page report on the problem co-written by Doyle in 1985, which was sent to every American bishop, John Paul ordered no outreach to victims, no binding policy to rid the priesthood of deviants. In 1989, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sent experts in canon law to Rome, seeking a streamlined process for defrocking child molesters rather than waiting for the byzantine Vatican bureaucracy and final word from the pope. John Paul refused. Litigation and prosecutions spread, but the pope remained passive.”

Despite what Jesus said in Matthew 18:6 and Luke 17:2 about “the millstone reward” for those who harm a child, it appears that Pope Leo XIV, like many of the cardinals who elected him, continues to allow the “Mafia within the current Church administration” to cover up abuse. Frances allowed this to happen when he fired Cardinal Gerhard Müller and appointed outed homosexual Cardinal Víctor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández as the Head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, responsible for handling clerical sex abuse cases. Francis also promulgated Vos Estis Lux Mundi, which most victims and advocates find to be a “total joke” when it comes to bishops investigating other bishops who are rarely found guilty of engaging in or covering up abuse despite a plethora of evidence to the contrary.

The fact that Leo did not remove Fernández; did not revoke Vos Estis Lux Mundi; and has promoted bishops like Washington Cardinal Robert McElroy, New York Archbishop Ronald Hicks, Detroit Archbishop Edward Weisenburger, and others accused of covering up abuse, demonstrates that he is “following Francis’ abuse cover-up playbook.” Although the media has led readers to believe that Leo sides with survivors over predators and complicit bishops by reporting how he has met with some abuse victims, the truth is that he continues to cover up clerical sexual abuse and has yet to discipline over 160 bishops credibly accused of sexually abusing children and vulnerable adults as documented by bishopaccountability.org.

Lisa Roers who reported to law enforcement being sexually abused by Father Dennis Hanneman when she was 9-11 years old, also reported the very egregious abuse to Omaha Archbishops Eldon Curtis in 2001; George Lucas in 2021; Pope Francis in 2024; and Pope Leo in 2025. When Pope Francis did not respond to her communication, Lisa sent this letter to Pope Leo dated May 22, 2025. After Leo was accused by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) in a Vos Estis complaint of covering up abuse in Peru, he had the Archdiocese of Omaha send this letter of July 15, 2025, to Lisa. In response, Lisa sent the following letter dated November 11, 2025, to the Archdiocese, which, after three months, has yet to be answered.

One probable reason Lisa’s abuse has been covered up since it was reported to Church authorities multiple times over 25 years is that the Omaha Archdiocese and Boys Town fear that countless other victims of sexual predation may come forward if they were to follow Church protocols by removing Hanneman from ministry and requesting (usually in Church bulletins and archdiocesan publications) that any other alleged victims report their abuse. If this were to happen, it could not only prove that Hannman abused Lisa and other victims, but that his abuse was never properly investigated and covered up by several Church leaders.

It is clear from their correspondence that Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka was worried about how God might judge Pope John Paul II. Any family member or friend of Pope Leo who may be concerned about his eternal salvation is encouraged to write or call Pope Leo, reminding him that he may “burn in hell” if he and other members of the Lavender Mafia continue to cover up the abuse of victims like Lisa Roers.

Anyone who is naive enough to believe that the pope and bishops are no longer protecting accused abusive priests like Father Hanneman at Boys Town is invited to watch “The Prayer of the Prey.” Warning: The abuse Lisa recounts is truly horrific, and her video is not intended to be watched by children.

If you appreciate my research and writings, please contribute to the “Save Our Seminarians” Fund that will help safeguard young men from becoming victims of homosexual predation in U.S. Catholic seminaries.

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.