WILL THE NEXT POPE BE BLACKMAILED?

If 80% of the cardinal electors are closeted homosexuals, how many are HIV positive?

For many years gay men and lesbians were perceived as security risks and excluded from military service because they engaged in homosexual behavior and were thought to be vulnerable to blackmail. Despite false reporting in the media, the Department of Defense (DOD) homosexual exclusion policy had nothing to do with a person’s sexual orientation, and everything to do with a person’s behavior. When the DOD policy was changed in 2011 allowing sexually active homosexuals to serve in the military, gay persons could no longer be blackmailed unless they remained in the closet.

Unlike the military where homosexuals make up a very small percentage of service men and women, around 80 percent of Roman Catholic clergy – except in Africa and Asia - are closeted homosexuals, many like Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill who is suing Grindr for outing him and reducing his chances of being made a bishop. A 2012 study of actively ministering or retired priests in the U.S. revealed that 67.3% of the priests self-identified as gay/homosexual; 5.8% reported that they were bisexual; and 26.9% identified themselves as heterosexuals. Since that study was undertaken 13 years ago, based on anecdotes and HUMINT I’ve received from both heterosexually and homosexually oriented clergy and laity, it appears to me that the percentage of U.S. born homosexual and bisexual priests has increased. Also, owing to a number of methodological flaws I uncovered in studies like the Regnerus Report that suggest the percentage of homosexuals in the priesthood is decreasing, I am not convinced of the validity of those findings (which, personally, I wish were true).

Many straight priests, seminarians, and members of the laity are often not aware of which bishops, priests, and seminarians are gay and what they are doing behind closed doors or when they go out of town. Even better than some surveys, one of the best ways to know what priests in a diocese or religious order are same sex-attracted is to ask a gay priest. When I asked a gay priest last year what percentage of priests in his Midwestern archdiocese were straight, he estimated 5 percent. To check on the accuracy of his estimate, I inquired about a particular priest in the archdiocese I knew to be straight. When I mentioned his name, the gay priest said: “A lot of us would love to bed him, but he’s definitely straight.”

In his 2019 work, In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy, French gay writer and researcher, Frédéric Martel, argued that 80 percent of the clergy in the Vatican are gay. His conclusions are based upon some 1,500 interviews with 41 cardinals, 52 bishops and monsignors, 45 papal ambassadors or diplomatic officials, 11 Swiss guards, and hundreds of priests and seminarians. Martel concluded that “The Vatican is one of the biggest gay communities in the world” and “that by forbidding priests to marry, the Church has become sociologically homosexual; and that by imposing a continence that is against nature, and a secretive culture, it is partly responsible for the tens of thousands of instances of sexual abuse that are undermining it from within.” It seems that Martel was incorrect in that a 2021 report estimated that “330,000 children were abused in France over the past 70 years.” Based on abuse statistics from other countries and the fact that bishops regularly underreport abuse, “instances of sexual abuse” in the Catholic Church are not in the “tens of thousands,” but in the millions.

Martel’s study is supported by a number of other studies and news articles that would lead one to conclude that the percentage of gay cardinals who will soon elect the next pope is higher than the percentage of gay archbishops and bishops; and the percentage of gay bishops is higher than the percentage of gay priests. This is only logical insofar as homosexual bishops who nominate priests for the episcopacy, both as ordinaries and auxiliaries, are more inclined to recommend fellow homosexuals over heterosexual candidates.

Research undertaken by Martel; psychotherapist and abuse advocate, the late Richard Sipe; professor of sociology, D. Paul Sullins; Polish researcher and theologian, Darius Oko; South African sociologist Victor Kotze; and others explains how decades of sex abuse cover-ups within the Catholic Church are intrinsically linked to the fact that so many cardinals, bishops and priests are gay. Their research, confirming the high percentage of homosexual clergy in the Roman (and not Eastern) Catholic Church, supports arguments dating back to the twelfth century, uncovered by Dr. Jules Gomes, a Cambridge educated biblical scholar, that the imposition of mandatory celibacy for diocesan clergy would result in an increase in the percentage of homosexual popes, bishops, priests, and seminarians in the Church.

Research also supports how clerical celibacy/chastity has never really been practiced throughout the centuries by the vast majority of Roman Catholic clergy. When Cardinal Jose Sanchez served as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy responsible for overseeing matters regarding priests and deacons, he fielded questions about conclusions in studies by Sipe and Kotze that “at any one time, 45 to 50 percent of Catholic clergy were not practicing celibacy.” When asked directly what the Cardinal thought of these studies, he said, “I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of those figures.” In addition to discovering that fewer than 50 percent of Roman Catholic priests at any given moment practice celibacy, Sipe also estimated that only 2 percent achieve total celibate chastity throughout their lives following ordination. When I was a young priest, I would have disputed that estimate. However, most Catholic priests ordained at least 25 years would not dispute Sipe’s findings.

If the vast majority of Roman Catholic clergy are closeted homosexuals and sexually active, does that mean that over 80 percent of the Cardinal electors may be subject to blackmail with many of them diagnosed as being HIV positive? Also, if researchers like Martel are correct that celibacy has contributed to a disproportionate number of homosexual clergy who are responsible for millions of “instances of sexual abuse,” might this explain why the late Pope Francis who was thought by most bishops and priests to be a closeted homosexual, never disciplined over 150 bishops credibly accused of abuse worldwide and failed to implement a zero-tolerance policy?

Consider this scenario: A closeted gay cardinal elector, when he was a seminary rector, sexually groomed seminarians without being reported, unlike Argentine Bishop Oscar Zanchetta, Buffalo Father Joseph Gatto, and others. When he was an archbishop in his native country, despite saying that there were no sexual predator priests in his archdiocese, he covered up numerous cases of sexual predation and homosexual misconduct owing to the fact that he could not judge subordinates for actions that he himself had committed. When the cardinal was elected pope, he never returned to his homeland owning to death threats he received from sex abuse victims as a result of covering up thousands of abuse cases. When the new pope’s history of sexual involvement with seminarians and priests, as well as his cover-up of countless sex abuse cases became known to the intelligence services of a Communist country, he was blackmailed like closeted government officials such as gay Embassy employee John Vassall and others who were documented to have been compromised because of their homosexual behavior. The blackmailed pope entered into a secret agreement with the Communist officials which granted them a say in who would be made bishops. The secret agreement was bartered by a cardinal who, like the pope, was also guilty of abusing seminarians and covering up abuse. In time, the pope created several cardinals like himself, closeted homosexuals who did not discipline abusive clergy or report them to civil authorities, but protected them from prosecution. When the pope died, little mention was made in the mainstream or Catholic media about how his closeted homosexuality impacted his ministry; allowed him to be blackmailed; contributed to abuse going unchecked in the Church; destroyed the faith of millions of Catholics; extinguished the vocations of straight seminarians which led to a decline in the worldwide number of priests; and resulted in the persecution of the Church in a particular Communist country.

Unlike in the book and movie, The Shoes of the Fisherman, in which a cardinal who was imprisoned by the Soviets in Siberia for 18 years is elected pope, the chances that persecuted Chinese Cardinal Joseph Zen will be elected in the pending conclave are very slim because of his advanced age (93). One can only hope and pray that a blackmailable cardinal with a history of sex abuse covers-ups, questionable doctrinal positions, and immoral behavior like previous popes in the history of the Catholic Church, will not be appearing soon on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.

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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 ​R​espect 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.