The U.S. bishops, together with Pope Francis, prided themselves as being pro-life when they got President Joe Biden to commute the sentences of 37 prisoners on federal death row. When he was the Bishop of Chiclayo, Pope Leo XIV in 2023 declared, “A Catholic cannot truly claim to be ‘pro-life’ by maintaining a stance against abortion while simultaneously advocating in favor of the death penalty.” Interestingly, neither Pope Francis nor the U.S. bishops were instrumental in getting the sentences commuted for pro-life activists who were arrested for praying and demonstrating at abortion clinics. President Joe Biden, accused of receiving holy communion sacrilegiously owing to his support for abortion funding, weaponized his Department of Justice (DoJ) to bring charges against more than 30 pro-lifers under the FACE Act.
Reported to have been a college pro-life leader at Villanova University in the 1970s, seminarian Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, has to decide if being pro-life includes lowering the suicide rate in the Catholic Church caused by clerical sex abuse and cover-ups. When many abuse victims discover that the pain they suffer from being abused and having their abuse covered up by Church leaders is not relieved by drugs and alcohol, they often turn to suicide. In many cases, the bishop who covers up for an abusive priest is the same bishop who refuses to be held accountable for the priest’s victim’s subsequent suicide.
Investigative reporter David Hammer, from WWLTV in New Orleans, recently produced a documentary detailing abuse by the Catholic Church that will premiere at a London Festival in June 2025. The film deals with the suicide of 29-year-old Scott Branner, who was groomed and abused by Father Brian Highfill over a period of 15 years, beginning when he was 10 years old. Scott was only one of many victims preyed upon by Highfill. Although numerous complaints were filed against Highfill, the Archdiocese of New Orleans did not place the priest on its list of clergy accused of abuse. It was after Scott’s death in 1993 that his brother Mike discovered love letters from Highfill that linked him to his brother’s suicide.
When Highfill served as an Air Force chaplain, he was accused of abuse by two airmen, Ed Joseph and Tom Forino. When the New Orleans Archdiocese launched an investigation and contacted the Archdiocese for the Military Services if it had received any allegations against Highfill from his time as a chaplain, Archbishop Timothy Broglio responded in 2018, “There is nothing in his personnel file that would cast suspicion on his ministry while a military chaplain.” However, upon further investigation, Hammer discovered that in 2016 Airman Ed Joseph had sent emails to the Archdiocese for the Military Services’ victims assistance coordinator and vicar general alleging Highfill sexually assaulted him at Bitburg Air Base in West Germany in 1986. Broglio would later get caught lying about Chaplain John “Matt” Lee, claiming his predecessor, Cardinal Edwin O’Brien, did not remove him from ministry because he was only accused of “probable homosexual orientation.” After being reported, Lee went on for five years sexually assaulting U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen and Marines while he was HIV positive before being arrested. He is currently serving a 30-year sentence in a federal prison.
hailed him as “a remarkably gentle and holy man.” Neither Murphy’s suicide in 2015, nor the corroborating testimony of two other males whose reports resulted in two six-figure settlements in 2017, compelled Dolan to remove Timone from ministry. More than four years after Murphy’s suicide, it took an article about Timone in The New York Times for Dolan to finally remove the predator in 2019.
On March 14, 2022, Father Michael Briese wrote to Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory:
“There was a young girl who loved our Lord and was befriended by an associate priest who raped her. In great shame and deep sorrow, the girl told her parents who would not believe her because priests supposedly are ‘holy men.’ The parents of the girl spoke to the pastor who defended the associate and claimed their daughter was lying. When the parents told their daughter to remain quiet, she then killed herself. A young girl’s life was lost to the predatory behavior of a so-called holy priest. To my knowledge, the rapist suffered no consequences. Here is my question, Your Eminence, ‘Which has greater value… the combined and total financial value of all our Archdiocese’s assets, or the value of that girl’s life lost to evil?”
After Briese wrote to Gregory and also confronted him for keeping Father Adam Park in ministry after he was accused in court documents of sexual predation and homosexual misconduct, Gregory suspended him. Gregory’s successor, Cardinal Robert McElroy, who infamously covered up abuse in the San Diego Diocese, has ordered Briese to be medically retired with a monthly retirement salary that will not cover the expenses of living even in a one bedroom apartment in the Washington area. Almost 70 years old, Briese’s monthly income stands in stark contrast to that of retired disgraced Cardinal Donald Wuerl who was reported for having received over $4 million from the archdiocese since 2020.
Not all victims of clerical sexual abuse go through with their suicidal plans. While Joshua Metcalf was discerning a vocation to the priesthood in 2020, he reported being sexually harassed by Ukrainian Catholic Father Mykhaylo Dosyak. Many sex abuse victims claim that the physical pain they experience from their abuser is not as harmful as the psychological pain they experience when their abuse is covered up by those in authority. Metcalf, believing that Ukrainian Bishop Paul Chomnycky was covering up the predatory behavior of Dosyak, became suicidal to the point where he planned to take his own life on November 2, 2021 by hanging. A visit from his sister, however, moved Metcalf to decide to fight for his rights and expose the abuse and the cover-up rather than choose suicide. Metcalf has retained legal counsel and has brought suit against Dosyak, Chomnycky, and the Eparchy of Stamford.
Like many priests groomed during the period of psychosexual development, Father George Koharchik went on to abuse boys, including Shaun Dougherty and Brian Sabo. Thirty years after their abuse took place, Dougherty and Sabo met with Koharchik who did not know that the men had arranged for the encounter to be recorded by CBS News. During their meeting, Dougherty, who today is the interim Executive Director for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), told Koharchik, “I tried to kill myself over this when I was 24.”
Abuse victims are deeply concerned about how Pope Leo XIV will deal not only with abusive clerics, but also prelates like Dolan, McElroy, Broglio, Gregory, O’Brien, Chomnycky, and others who cover it up. In light of the underreported suicide rate among victims of clerical sexual abuse, it remains to be seen just how pro-life Pope Leo XIV truly is.
Gene Thomas Gomulka is a sexual abuse victims’ advocate, investigative reporter, 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.
Image: Daniel Reche
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