PARTLOW (VA)
Complicit Clergy [Partlow, VA]
September 3, 2024
By Gene Thomas Gomulka
Professionals who provide deprogramming therapy to victims who have been lured into cults report that cult leaders often use blackmail and extortion to prevent recruits from breaking away from the fold. These cult leaders require members to “confess” their deepest secrets and vulnerabilities as a part of the grooming process and later threaten to use these secrets against those who fail to comply with cult practices. While cults have fascinated screenwriters and journalists alike, the media has yet to report on what is arguably the largest ongoing sex cult system to date: the web of countless closeted homosexual bishops and priests who recruit, groom, and extort same-sex-attracted seminarians for sexual favors.
While many heterosexual seminarians and priests face reprisals for rejecting sexual advances and reporting abuse by homosexual superiors, an increasing number of homosexually-oriented seminarians are coming forward to describe how gay bishops and seminary leaders try to blackmail them into engaging in nonconsensual sex. Same-sex-attracted young men who enter seminaries with the intention of remaining celibate are especially vulnerable to a superior’s whims because they risk being dismissed in accord with the Church’s official position on homosexuality (although this teaching is rarely practiced by members of the clergy). The truth is that many chaste homosexually-oriented seminarians are thrown out not because of their orientation or behavior, but because they refuse to be “sex slaves” of predatory clergy. Allow me to present three case studies involving Joshua, “Robert,” and “Dan.”
While Joshua Metcalf was discerning a vocation to the priesthood in 2020, he disclosed his homosexual orientation to Ukrainian Catholic Father Mykhaylo Dosyak. Dosyak allegedly responded by bombarding Metcalf with sexual innuendos and advances, including graphic text messages such as, “It’s a question what I will be doing during the night … Have to look for some kovbasa” (i.e., someone with a large penis). After Metcalf’s reports about Dosyak’s sexual escapades were covered up by Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Stamford Bishop Paul Chomnycky who continues to keep Dosyak as Pastor of Rhode Island’s St. Michael the Archangel Parish, Metcalf filed a lawsuit against Dosyak, Chomnycky, and the Eparchy.
Joshua’s case resembles that of another celibate same-sex-attracted former seminarian, “Robert,” who lived, studied, and worked in three seminaries, one monastery, and one religious community. “Robert” described how priests on the seminary faculties took advantage of his homosexual orientation by propositioning him for sex in exchange for ordination. He recounted one incident in particular where he was driven out of a seminary because he tried to report being preyed upon, writing:
When I tried several times to report being sexually assaulted or reported abuse suffered by others, I was put on ‘formation probation.’ Essentially, this meant that I was not playing by their rules and was being warned to get in line, keep quiet, or find myself ‘out on the street.’ After sharing with a seminarian how I witnessed two seminarians having sex, I was accused by the vice-rector of ‘spreading gossip’ and was again placed on ‘formation probation.’ Because I could ‘see the writing on the wall,’ I decided to leave the seminary after I was threatened to never speak or write about what I witnessed in that seminary.
“Dan” is another homosexually-oriented seminarian who, after rejecting the sexual advances of his gay rector, reported being dismissed by his Cardinal who himself was sued by a male lover in his previous archdiocese. “Dan’s” allegations are corroborated by another former straight seminarian who filed a similar sexual harassment complaint against the same rector before he was coerced into leaving formation by his own homosexual archbishop. “Dan’s” case exposes the hypocrisy of gay bishops who claim that they do not permit homosexuality in seminaries, only to reward gay clergy who keep the “code of silence” with plum posts as seminary rectors, vocations directors, and other career enhancing (arch)diocesan positions.
Like in cults which feature initiation rituals meant to test whether recruits have “made it” into the fold, former seminarians in Chile who came forward in 2018 found that their real seminary admissions test was whether they would engage in sexual antics with the seminary rector, Father Mauro Ojeda; Father Humberto Henriquez; and Bishop Gonzalo Duarte. Ojeda reportedly required seminarians to go naked into a pool with him and threatened to expel those who refused to comply. Henriquez is accused of raping a seminarian whom he drugged, and Duarte is accused of forcing students to give him back massages and to kiss him on the mouth. The former seminarians testified that they all reported the abuse to their respective ecclesiastical superiors who did nothing but guarantee them that they would never be ordained.
Like Joshua, “Robert,” and “Dan, homosexually oriented seminarian, Gabe Giella, likewise experienced a seminary environment where he was solicited for sex. Giella described how priests groomed and propositioned seminarians and half-drunk priest guests were seen “leaving the bishop’s and clergy quarters at the crack of dawn.” After an incident where Giella turned down one seminarian’s request for oral sex, another seminarian told him, “You know full well that every guy here including the priests and even the bishop would f[**]k you if they had the chance.” Reflecting upon his time in seminary, Giella wrote:
Sexual secrecy is the currency in the church and learning how to use it is almost treated like an art form in seminaries … Blackmail is the clergy’s bitcoin by which position, power, and control are bartered in the shadows, costing children and adults alike their faith, their safety, and well being – and in some cases, even their lives.
Same-sex-attracted seminarians who turn down gay superiors’ sexual demands and are dismissed with the excuse that “We cannot have homosexuals in seminaries” realize that their sexual orientation had nothing to do with their dismissal when they learn how the priesthood is infested with homosexually-active clerics. When a man discerning a priestly vocation spent a week at a pontifical seminary, he was scandalized to learn that the priest who sponsored his visit was said to be “sleeping with half the faculty and many students.” The priest was later accused of abusing teenage boys and removed from ministry.
Other priests accused of sexual predation or homosexual misconduct like Monsignor Walter Rossi, the rector of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.; Monsignor Battista Ricca, who oversees Pope Francis’ Casa Santa Marta in Vatican City; “Grindr Monsignor” Jeffrey Burrill of the La Crosse Diocese; Father Mark Payne of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee; Father Adam Park of the Archdiocese of Washington; and Father Peter Harman of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, all enjoy cover and are never disciplined because most work for homosexual bishops whom they know are also closeted homosexuals.
Bishop Thomas Paprocki continues to fill chancery posts with gay priests despite video footage that showed them participating in a drag party with other priests in a Springfield rectory. Prelates like George Lucas are known to have assigned homosexual priest “couples” like Monsignors John Renken and Kenneth Steffen to live together as “co-pastors.” Other bishops around the country are allowing cohabiting gay priests to be buried together in places like Oahu where sources believe that at least eight priest “couples” are interred. Prelates who protect their priests’ sexual secrets at any cost inspire little confidence that the Church’s sex cults will come to an end.
While cult leaders often mask their nefarious underworld by marketing their cults as pathways to wisdom or self-empowerment, gay Church leaders attract young men by advertising seminaries as supernatural places where they will “learn to become an alter Christus” and “prepare for combat to save souls.” Unfortunately, one seminarian who was blindfolded and raped, and another who was drugged and sodomized, discovered seminaries’ dark underbellies only after they entered and gave up all to follow Christ. Scandalous behavior by superiors has led some to quip, “If Jesus were to apply to a seminary today, would He be accepted?”
Like many cult leaders who physically “brand” their victims by searing indelible symbols into their flesh, many clerical predators “brand” their prey with lasting psychological and psychosexual scars. When late U.S. sex abuse expert, A.W. Richard Sipe, wrote to Pope Benedict XVI in 2008 and to then-Bishop Robert McElroy in 2016 with allegations that ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick abused seminarians and young priests, Sipe recounted that many of McCarrick’s victims disclosed how the abuse left “dire consequences in their lives that [did] not end in their victimization alone.” Sipe discovered that in some cases, McCarrick’s homosexual abuse damaged his victims’ sexual orientation and their ability to forge meaningful heterosexual relationships, and in other cases, the abuse “paved the way” for abused clergy to “pass the tradition on — to have sex with each other and even with minors.” Sipe’s findings were validated by a letter from a priest who reported suffering “sexual and emotional abuse” by McCarrick and described that these experiences “had left him so traumatized that it triggered him to touch two 15-year-old boys inappropriately.” Perhaps the Church’s best kept secret is how many cardinals, archbishops, and bishops preyed upon young men who today as priests “pass this tradition on.”
As the Church continues to hemorrhage vocations and victims continue to be abused, rising numbers of homosexually-oriented clerics who were “used” by gay Church leaders are speaking out against abuse and hypocrisy in the highest echelons of the Church. An outspoken homosexual Irish cleric, Pat Buckley, criticized closeted promiscuous homosexual members of the clergy, writing:
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. A cleric gets promoted for being a company man, for having a brown tongue, and it seems for bending over for your superiors.
While most cults are disbanded and their leaders are arrested once their illegal activities come to light, no amount of media exposure is stopping Church leaders who continue to sex traffic both heterosexual and homosexual young men in seminaries and reap rewards from parishioners whose collection basket donations finance accused predators. Will Catholics in the pews keep “paying and obeying” by funding the bishops’ sex cults? Or, will Catholics finally have the courage to defund complicit clerics until accountability has been served?
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. Follow Gene on YouTube, Substack, or email him at msgr.investigations@gmail.com.