Let’s imagine that you are a good friend of another woman whose husband has been cheating on her with different women. Because you do not approve of adultery, and because you know that your friend is a loving wife and mother who does not deserve to be betrayed, you feel obligated to inform her of the double life her husband has been leading. When you speak with her about her husband’s infidelity, she becomes angry with you and tells you that she never wants to see or speak with you again. Essentially, she engages in what is known as “psychological denial.”
The woman’s denial of the harsh truth is a form of self-protection aimed at preventing an emotional breakdown. Fearing change, the woman feels that addressing the affairs could lead to a painful breakup, divorce, or upending family life. She is also worried and embarrassed about what others might think about her failed marriage. By engaging in psychological denial, she directs anger at her friend who brought up the truth instead of confronting her unfaithful husband.
After years of investigating and reporting clerical sexual abuse, I often feel like the woman who informed her friend of her husband’s infidelity. When I write about popes, cardinals, bishops, and priests whom I know to be credibly accused of sexual predation, homosexual misconduct, abuse cover-ups, and reprisals against whistleblowers, it is very discouraging when people engage in a form of “spiritual denial” by faulting me instead of the unfaithful clerics.
Do Catholics engage in “spiritual denial” because they fear their faith in the Roman Catholic Church might be harmed if they were to acknowledge that many members of the clergy are like the Scribes and Pharisees whom Jesus rebuked for their hypocritical lives? Do they fear being denied burial in the Church or being unjustly excommunicated like Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, laicized like Monsignor Ricardo Coronado, or removed from office like Bishop Joseph Strickland, if they too were to confront Church leaders for engaging in and covering up sexual predation and homosexual misconduct? Like the woman who does not want to know the truth about her cheating husband, many Catholics do not want to know the truth about popes like Francis and Leo, as well as the 160 bishops credibly accused of abuse, because - both spiritually and psychologically - they can’t handle the truth.
Some Catholics question my writings because they are far more influenced in their beliefs by what they read or view about Pope Leo in the mainstream and Catholic media, like EWTN, CNA, Crux, and NCR, whose news reports about the Catholic hierarchy, in my opinion, are in some cases reminiscent of reporting about the Soviet Union by Tass and Pravda during the Cold War era. Consider how the mainstream and Catholic media concealed all the abuse that Pope Francis covered up in Argentina, as documented in this short clip of Martin Boudot’s superb documentary, Sex Abuse in the Church: Code of Silence, After watching this production, one can understand why Francis never returned to his native Argentina, and why the Vatican thought he was more at risk of being assassinated by a clerical abuse survivor, or a relative of an abuse victim, than someone like Mehmet Ali Ağca who shot and seriously wounded Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981, in St. Peter’s Square.
Pope Leo’s upcoming visit to Peru in November is being discussed by Catholic podcasters like Anthony Stine of Return to Tradition. In his recent podcast entitled “Some very dark accusations are coming to light about Pope Leo in Peru,” Stine presents a timeline of Leo’s mishandling of an abuse case in the Diocese of Chiclayo that was committed by Father Eleuterio Vásquez, who was very close to Leo’s secretary, Monsignor Edgard Iván Rimaycuna Inga, whom Leo befriended when he was (according to Stine) around 15-17 years old. Stine also addresses how Leo reprised against Monsignor Ricardo Coronado, who exposed how the Pope covered up abuse that was even reported by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). Stine’s reporting of Rimaycuna that derived from an article in InfoVaticana entitled “The personal secretary of Leo XIV was a disciple of Lute, the priest from Chiclayo accused of sexual abuse whom Rome refuses to investigate,” may lead people to question the true nature of Rimaycuna’s relationship with Pope Leo and predator Father “Lute” Vásquez.
One reason I believe the mainstream and Catholic media will not investigate how the Pope may have covered up far more abuse than he has already been accused of doing is that victims alleging that Leo covered up their abuse when he was the Prior General of the Augustinian Order from 2001 to 2013 have yet to allow me to disclose their identities for fear of reprisals. The same situation existed when 12 seminarians and priests feared reprisals if they had gone public with abuse allegations against ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick that they shared with my fellow sex abuse victims’ advocate and psychotherapist friend, Richard Sipe. Those allegations that Sipe shared with then-San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy in July 2016, without revealing the names of McCarrick’s victims, were never mentioned in the whitewashed McCarrick Report.
Insofar as Church leaders and the media concealed allegations that Pope Francis preyed upon Jesuit novices and covered up countless sex abuse cases in Argentina, and even though InfoVaticana disproved Elise Allen’s portrayal of Pope Leo in Crux as the victim of a smear campaign by Sodalicio and Monsignor Coronado, one should expect that same complicit media to avoid engaging in authentic investigative journalism both before and during the Pope’s upcoming trip to Peru.
Rarely a week passes without one or more victims sharing their stories of abuse with me. Unfortunately, because Pope Leo and most bishops fail to investigate and continue to cover up abuse of the most heinous nature, I cannot respect them, knowing that victims often suffer more from their abuse being covered up by Church officials than from the actual abuse itself. Like the woman of the adulterous husband, Catholics and media sources can deny or ignore my reporting of abuse and cover-ups, but I feel an obligation to report them.
In May of 2002, I reported Chaplain John “Matt” Lee for homosexual predation, only to have my ecclesiastical endorsement to serve as a military chaplain revoked by then-Archbishop Edwin O’Brien, and to have my report covered up for five years before Lee was arrested after sexually assaulting Naval Academy Midshipmen and Marines while he was HIV positive. Lee is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence. It remains to be seen if Pope Leo and several prelates who have been reported to me for engaging in or covering up abuse will ever be brought to justice.
Abuse victims, including the nuns who reported being raped by Father Marko Rupnik, will be pleased to know, however, that corrupt and complicit clerics who engage in abuse and sex trafficking in my upcoming co-authored novel, Den of Iniquity, will suffer an even more unpleasant fate than Chaplain Lee. You can access the opening chapter of Den of Iniquity at https://gomulka.org/books.
