CANONIZATION OR IMPRISONMENT?

Why do my sister and many Catholic friends hold popes like Francis and Leo in high esteem, while I believe these pontiffs and numerous U.S. prelates (like Mahony, Lucas, McElroy, Gregory, Cupich, Knestout, Lori, etc.) deserve to be placed behind bars? The reason is that their knowledge of Leo, like that of his predecessor Pope Francis and other bishops, is often based on input they receive from complicit mainstream and Catholic media sources like the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), Catholic News Agency, Catholic News Service, and various Catholic publications and websites.

What my sister and many Catholic friends fail to understand is that, as a priest in whom many people confide, and after years of pastoral and supervisory experience, I am privy to information that is often not known to the media or covered up by Church officials. Also, because I am not homosexually oriented and am very pro-life and pro-family, I will address topics that most Catholics will not hear addressed in their parishes, pastored either by pro-LGBTQ homosexual priests or straight priests who fear being removed from ministry or laicized if they were to address clerical sexual abuse, as well as consensual homosexual and heterosexual clerical misconduct in the Catholic Church.

One reason few priests can write about clerical sexual predation and misconduct is that, at one point in time, they may have been compromised and can be subject to blackmail. Even though I was propositioned by an archbishop, two priests, and two seminarians who were later made monsignors, none of them succeeded in getting me into their beds. Interestingly, I learned that one of the two priests who tried to talk me into a threesome, six years earlier, had drugged and sodomized a U.S. Marine Corps veteran while he was a seminarian studying for the Diocese of San Diego. That abused veteran, Mark Brooks, who died a young death, inspired my upcoming co-authored novel (with Denver novelist David Tracy) based on my screenplay, Den of Iniquity. Inspired by true-life events involving many gay bishops, priests, and seminarians, the novel, which we hope to publish this year while I am still alive and able to write, would most certainly have appeared on the Church’s former Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Forbidden Books) that was first introduced in 1560 and was discontinued in 1966.

What one will not learn from reading Den of Iniquity is that the Archbishop who would have liked to have slept with me when I was a seminarian at the North American College in Rome, or when he invited me to stay overnight in his episcopal residence, was successful in “befriending” a seminarian from the Midwest and a seminarian from the West Coast, both of whom are Cardinals today. Owing to my knowledge of these real-life stories, I can only concur with the late Irish Bishop Pat Buckley, who wrote,

Today, the Roman Catholic episcopate and priesthood are predominantly gay. Is it a case that they promote each other? Is it a case that they promote each other in return for sexual favors? The case of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is a case in point. McCarrick saw to it that quite a number of his former bedfellows got miters. The old belief that the Holy Spirit appoints bishops is nonsense. A cleric gets promoted for being a company man, for having a brown tongue, and it seems for bending over for your superiors. Why are so many gay men attracted to the priesthood? Do they go in there to hide? Do they go in to escape? Do they go in for the position and the status? Do they go in for the easy, comfortable life?

Anyone who questions Buckley’s statement needs to remember that the current head of the USCCB Committee on the Protection of Children and Young People is none other than Richmond Bishop Barry Knestout. As I reported in “Pope Leo: Act or Resign,” Knestout, who served as priest-secretary for ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from 2003 to 2004, was present at McCarrick’s beach house the night of Friday, May 6, 1994, when McCarrick was reported to have sexually assaulted a seminarian, Wiesław Walawender. The seminarian later filed a lawsuit and won a settlement against the Archdiocese of Newark, identifying Knestout as having been an accessory after the fact. What does this tell you about the character and orientation of the U.S. Bishops who have placed Knestout in charge of protecting children and young people?

Another reason my sister and some Catholic friends don’t know “the whole truth” is that abuse victims and whistleblowers fear costly reprisals from Catholic Church leaders and their lawyers if they were to make their allegations public. Even if credible abuse allegations are reported, as happened when Stephen Brady reported that Bakersfield Father Craig Harrison had been accused of being “a sexual predator,” Brady still had to spend tens of thousands of dollars on defense lawyers, even though the lawsuits filed against him by Harrison were all dismissed.

If corrupt Church leaders cannot blackmail you, particularly for some sexual infraction, they will resort to lies. Cardinal Edwin F. O’Brien, when he was the Archbishop for the Military Services, accused me, while still a priest on active duty, of being scheduled to marry a naval officer in the Chapel of the Sea in Coronado, CA, on May 15, 2004. Acting on information he received from a gay chaplain who today is rumored to be living with another man in San Francisco, O’Brien revoked my ecclesiastical endorsement to serve in the military, where I could have remained for another six years. The truth of the matter is that the female chaplain I was accused of planning to marry in Coronado, CA, conducted the wedding of one “Sandra Coronado” on May 15, 2004, to an enlisted Marine in the Marine Corps Base Quantico Chapel in Virginia (2,616 miles away from the chapel in Coronado, CA). Neither O’Brien nor my diocesan Ordinary, Bishop Joseph Adamec, apologized, reinstated me, or made restitution for the false accusation and unjust dismissal.

When Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò accused Pope Francis of preying on Jesuit novices in Argentina, Eric Sammons, the Editor-in-Chief of Crisis magazine, criticized him for making unsubstantiated allegations against the Pope. The problem was that Vigano, like Richard Sipe, who in July 2016 shared allegations against McCarrick with then-San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy, was bound by confidentiality in not revealing the names of the victims. I experience the same problem today when I allege sexual predation and homosexual misconduct involving popes, cardinals, bishops, and priests.

In 2002, when I alleged in a report dated May 6, 2002, that a Catholic Chaplain based on Oahu had a “live-in boyfriend,” I could not reveal the source of my information because the priest who reported the promiscuous chaplain to me feared that Archbishop O’Brien, known to underreport and cover up abuse and homosexual misconduct, would arrange for him to have a psychological evaluation and be dismissed from the military. Just as the allegations Sipe brought to McElroy and Pope Francis in 2016 about McCarrick proved to be true, so too the allegation I reported in 2002 was substantiated in 2007 when the reported chaplain, Father John “Matt” Lee, was arrested and is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence.

Even though I am currently in possession of allegations of sexual abuse and cover-ups involving Pope Leo XIV and other high-ranking clerics, until the sources release me from confidentiality, many people may feel I have no right to question in my writings the sexual orientation of popes like Francis and Leo, and cardinals like Fernández, McElroy, Gregory, and others. To illustrate my point that Catholics have favorable views of certain prelates whom I believe are egregious predators and closeted gay frauds, I will share in my next article a newly released restatement I received from “Agnes,” the woman who alleges having been abused by the late Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin whom many people have been led to believe was innocent of abuse allegations brought against him before his death.

An excellent July 3, 2026, “Padre Peregrino” article, “The First Week of July 1963” by Denver Father David Nix, as well as an earlier article, “Joseph Bernardin: A Double Life Prince of the Church and ‘Lavender Mafia’ Don” by Joe Kellenyi, support the woman’s claims that Bernardin was a sexual predator. If the alleged victim chose to share her story with me, the same story she shared years earlier with Mallachi Martin fictionalized in his bestselling book, Windswept House, it’s because she knows I would never betray her confidence like Richard Sipe never betrayed the confidence of the 12 seminarians and priests who reported being abused by McCarrick, and like Archbishop Vigano never betrayed the Jesuit novices who confidentially shared how Jorge Bergoglio sexually abused vulnerable young men under his supervision. After reading the woman’s account in next week’s article, I’ll let you decide if you think Bernardin is the saint the Chicago media and Catholic Church leaders made him out to be, and if I just might also have credible evidence that leads me to believe that Pope Leo should resign and live a life of prayer and penance based on what he did and failed to do when he was the Prior General of the Augustinian Order (2001-2013) and the Bishop of Chiclayo (2015-2023).

While my Substack articles are free, if you find them informative and you wish to support my research and writing, I invite you to make a donation by clicking HERE.

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.