Are US Bishops Ordering "Hits" on Whistle-Blowing Priests?

Don't they look lovely, gentle, kindly old men?

Don't be fooled. I found this truly terrifying & shocking. It really is unbelievable but the facts are incontrovertible and all in the public domain. Judge for yourself based on the facts.

I know first-hand how priests, bishops and cardinals often wield "soft-power" in the Church. Passive-aggressive comments like "you are clearly very angry/ aggressive/ *insert pejorative here*" are common tools. Priests are accused of being mentally ill, needing therapy, being sent away "on retreat". But the questions raised by goings on in the diocese of Buffalo, New York, are far darker and more serious than even these clear abuses.

To build some context for readers who are unaware, back in November 2018, Michael Voris of Church Militant was on his way back from the Bishop's Conference in Baltimore, when he noticed Bishop Richard Malone of Buffalo was sitting near him in the airport. Malone had been under pressure from laity and the media due to his apparent tolerance of sexually abusive priests in active ministry. In a press conference in November 2018, he invited reporters to look at his past experience in the diocese of Portland, Maine, the diocese which covers the entire state of Maine.

The investigative team at WKBW, a news channel in Buffalo, did exactly that. Charlie Specht and his team obtained documents from the Portland diocese and spoke with abuse victim advocates.

What they uncovered was a very different narrative from what Bp. Malone suggests. They found two cases where Bishop Malone provided cover for sexual predation. A week later, the airport encounter took place. Michael Voris can be seen in this uncomfortable video asking Malone multiple times about his decision to keep Father Dennis Riter in ministry, despite several claims of sexual abuse of a minor. In the video, Malone says "it's a lie" when asked about the Riter situation. Malone appears to not want to answer any questions and tells his spokeswoman to call the police. The full run-down on Malone is available on Church Militant here.

I remember lots of people commenting "Oh no! Typical aggressive Voris!" when I first saw this, but how Voris was vindicated by what happened next!

Malone tried for a year to keep the lid on the burgeoning scandal that has been literally decades in the making. His repeated attempts to cover up what was going on blew up in his face thanks to a series of whistleblower disclosures made to local Buffalo media.

It got so bad that CBS News' 60 Minutes aired a segment last October interviewing whistleblower Siobhan O'Connor, who was Malone's private secretary and who had released hundreds of pages of internal documents proving Malone was covering up abusers.

It was less than a month after the 60 Minutes segment that Church Militant caught up with Malone in the Detroit airport asking him about his reinstatement of a priest with three accusations of abuse against him.

On September 12, 2018, leaked church records showed that there were 106 clergy in the Diocese of Buffalo who had been credibly accused of sexually abusing children, far more than a list of 42 which had been released by Malone's Diocese in March of the year. Malone, along with many other former Bishops, has also been accused of shielding some of these "predator priests," as well as at least one nun, from potential prosecution and transferring some to other parishes to avoid scrutiny.

In September 2019, leaked audio recordings of Malone revealed that he diverted 40 percent of donations sent to Catholic charities in the Diocese of Buffalo to a foundation known as "The Bishop's Fund for the Faith." A leaked document from one of Malone's meetings with other members on the board of the local Catholic charities also revealed that the foundation was included in the Diocese's budget as a separate corporate entity which helps protect the Diocese of Buffalo from being vulnerable to payments stemming from lawsuits and bankruptcy (in the USA religious organisations do not have to make public their financial records).

Some leaked audio tapes then showed that even Malone himself thought that he couldn't continue to ride out the storm.

Eventually, the Vatican confirmed the resignation of embattled Malone in December last year, having clung to power for two years. On December 10, Malone said he submitted his resignation early so the Diocese could "move forward" and added: "It's just the right thing to do, and I'll still be living in the Buffalo area because I'm still a Bishop in good standing, so you'll see me around."

But think about it, how could such a legacy end with the resignation of one man?

Now, a special report from Christine Niles reveals the shocking depth of the corruption in Buffalo. Niles focuses on the fact that in Buffalo, much of the work behind the scenes was done by Malone's chief auxiliary Bishop Edward Grosz, and he appears to be far dirtier than Malone.

While Malone was forced to step down last year after a Vatican investigation, the 74-year-old Grosz has escaped any such investigation — even though his crimes may be far more extensive.

Whistleblower Siobhan O'Connor, Malone's former secretary, said this: It has been well known for years — especially among the priests — that Bp. Grosz covers for and protects his classmates and other select priests."

Elsewhere on her website she writes, "Bishop Grosz must be held accountable for his appalling actions, multiple cover-ups, and utterly complicit behaviour. … Bishop Grosz has hidden away and avoided public scrutiny for long enough. He cannot get away with it any longer!"

One notorious cover-up Grosz was directly involved in (there are a number evidenced) was that of Fr. Dennis Riter, accused by multiple men of abuse, yet still in active ministry, pastor of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish in Dunkirk. Among his alleged victims, Anthony Ravarini, six years old at the time of his abuse which was witnessed by a seminarian named Wes Walawender.

Appalled by what he had witnessed, Walawender wrote a letter in 1992 addressed to Bishop Grosz and Bishop Edward Head detailing the assault, hand delivering the letter to Head's secretary, Fr. Peter Popadick (you couldn't make that name up, could you??). He got no response whatsoever but then, weeks later, ran into the unfortunately named Popadick, who dismissed the letter, saying it was "not well received" and "not appreciated."

The case never went anywhere. Riter was subsequently suspended from ministry in the spring of 2018 over other abuse allegations — and promptly returned to active ministry a few months later, the investigator never even interviewing Ravarini or Walawender, even accusing the men of fabricating the entire story.

OK so the now familiar pattern of financial corruption, abuse, cover-up. Satanic, horrendous, appalling. It must stop. But it gets worse. The 1992 letter addressed to Grosz was written on the computer of Fr. Joseph Moreno, a priest who died only days before he was scheduled to travel to Washington, D.C. in 2012 with a dossier he was going to hand over to then-papal nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. That dossier would've blown the lid off the homosexual network in Buffalo — a network Grosz would've been intimately aware of.

But he was found dead before he could do so.

Fr Moreno's sister Susan Moreno told Church Militant

"Joey knew a lot of secrets. And we can start as far back as 1992, when you brought in Anthony, the young man who was abused by Fr. Dennis Riter."

Susan Moreno has always found the circumstances of her brother's death suspicious. He was found dead in his home on the afternoon of October 13, 2012, shot in the back of his head. There's no picture of the gun in his hands — his hands are closed. There's no blood spatter, blood misting on his arms, on the gun, on the wall where supposedly he did this at.

An autopsy revealed two bullet wounds in his skull — yet his death was ruled a suicide. One of the bullet holes had been sutchered shut. Reportedly, Fr Moreno also had a crippled right hand which he did not use, so he would have had to have used his left hand to shoot himself in the right hand side of his head - twice!

So if it wasn't suicide, what happened? Why wasn't there an investigation? Why is Grosz not under scrutiny from the police and the Vatican? Why did interim Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger, when asked at a press conference:

"the auxiliary bishop’s handwriting was literally on many of these cover-ups that have gone on here. How can people have faith and trust that the diocese under your administration is charting a new course, when you have part of the old guard still in place here.?”

State:

“That's a very good question. But you're giving me information now that I'm hearing now today. So I did not know that. What you just told me is the...facts...I've read a lot of different things. And if that can be established and that proves to be something that would make it difficult for Bishop Grosz or any other priest of the diocese to perform their role, then that would have to be something I take into consideration and it might alter the status quo.”

Can he really be prepared to take over the responsibility for this diocese with this degree of naivety?

A priest said to me last week that, just as Bishop Fulton Sheen once prophesised, it is us, the laity who will have to save the Church. He said "you know that if us priests stood up and spoke out our bishops would squash us like bugs". Given what has happened in Buffalo, and adding that to the stories I have heard from priests all across the UK, Ireland and the USA, I have absolute belief in that statement - not in every instance, but in many, where manipulative, dark men have long sought power and influence in the Church and have risen to positions where they can take advantage of the money and lifestyle they are gifted to indulge the darkness in their hearts. Some, no doubt, are faithful. It doesn't seem difficult to me to spot those ones. Some are merely inept; they lack the courage, the smarts, the requisite caritas for the role they have been given. Perhaps they are "spacing bishops" placed by a "magic circle" of complicit clergymen to provide a spacing gap between problematic or divisive episcopates. But some are dark.

The good news is that Catholics are getting together and saying "enough". We are mobilising. We are supported by good priests and bishops. We are working in the light of Christ and every day we ask Christ to use us to clean out His Church. We won't stand by in silence any longer. It is not your Church, it is our Church. We know your secrets, or we have suspicions based on evidence and we are investigating. We will not "leave the Church" as Cardinal Bassetti wants us to, we will rescue Christ's Bride and restore Catholicism to the world; a legacy of truth, honour, beauty & integrity that built Western civilisation.

"The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God, it cannot be withstood. So the Faith was planted: so it must be restored."

You will not cause us to cower. You will not silence us. Time is up.

If you have had enough and you want to find a way to mobilise with other Catholics to let our useless bishops know we're not going to fund their lavish lifestyles while they continue to act in such an inept way, get in touch. Join the fight!

Watch the full report from Church Militant or read the full transcript here. And support Church Militant who are doing amazing work in demonstrating to those dark men that we will not surrender!