Church Militant The Vortex Feed

TRANSCRIPT

The outrage which has erupted against Detroit Abp. Allen Vigneron and his archdiocese following the shameful manner in which Fr. Eduard Perrone was publicly maligned by his staff is reaching viral levels in the Catholic blogosphere.

In fact, the entire case is opening up the floodgates on questions of just how dioceses are being administered.

Multiple clergy from around the country are reporting that their bishops are little more than figureheads — even puppets — being controlled by their lawyers and PR firms and marketing agencies, all because they are afraid to do anything which would endanger the golden goose of their financial appeals or threaten a lawsuit or bring about bad publicity.

So they simply rubber-stamp whatever lawyers or marketeers or PR gurus tell them.

And there appears to be a "semblance of truth" to these claims. They are, as the bishops themselves say all the time, "credible." Why? Because there is precedent.

Remember back in 2002 when the first round of the homopredation crisis broke in The Boston Globe? 

One after another, bishops fell back on the ridiculous notion that they just listened to the experts about readmitting largely homopredator priests into the parishes.

In other words, they scapegoated the psychologists and therapists.

Well, it seems like absolutely nothing has changed as all the highly paid experts are running the show, with the bishops signing off on whatever is dropped in front of them and of course approved by their incompetent staffs.

Circling back to Detroit and the fiasco surrounding the charge against Fr. Perrone and the handling of it by the archdiocese, the official statement handed out by the archdiocese had to have been approved by the expensive legal firm of Bodman, yet nowhere did the most expensive legal firm in the state of Michigan give one consideration to the reputation of Fr. Perrone, nor did they apparently even raise the issue to Abp. Vigneron.

But they did recommend that a public release be issued to the media — a release that was heavily quoted in stories all over the world, to a readership and viewership of well over a hundred million people.

As we reported Yesterday, even Fox News ran an extended ticker, virtually quoting parts of the release word by word.

But relying on "experts" whose only concern is limiting financial liability is not isolated here in Detroit to just throwing priests under the bus. It also extends to money-grabs.

In view of the disgust over how Fr. Perrone was treated — meaning "no due process" — various Detroit insiders are now contacting Church Militant spilling the beans on other ways in which the archbishop is being led around by the nose by his cadre of "experts and staff."

Take, for example, the recently announced money-grab called "Unleash the Gospel" recently reduced from fleecing the flock of 220 million to a mere 190 million.

Church Militant was very recently shared with some of the breakdown of where the hoped-for 190 million would be spent.

First, about $22 million is slated for, get this, "nourishing disciples and empowering outreach to disciples."

No one really knows what the heck that marketing language means.

Here's another: Abp. Vigneron and his team are going to spend $13 million on "a Spirit led granting program ... to create joyful missionary disciples."

Did we mention that the international company running the show on all this and calling the shots, CCS Fundraising, which also raises tens of millions for Lutherans and Anglicans, is going to walk away with nearly $20 million.

But the archdiocese doesn't broadcast that too loudly; they certainly don't read press releases from the altar of the archdiocese's parishes when they are asking for your money.

It's outfits like this that sit down with bishops all over the country and decide which parishes are going to close and get sold off — meaning, scattering the patrimony of the Church to the four winds.

But again, you never hear about this, no one at the chancery ever gets on the phone and blabs to the Associated Press about their own fleecing of the flock.

Likewise, Abp. Vigneron and his cronies downtown, while happy to break all sorts of protocol and recommendations of the even the Pope himself, they will never be issuing press releases showing their swanky condo outfit down in the Cayman Islands.

Yep, the archdiocese of Detroit owns a luxurious condo on the island known for being a financial haven for off-shore accounts.

Locals tell Church Militant that not infrequently are there parties and so forth going on down there with assorted bishops and clergy dropping by for some fun. But, you won't see that story running as a ticker on Fox News.

The amount of duplicity and rot has two dimensions. What Detroit plots to keep from the public's eyes and what the archbishops and his lawyers and staff are perfectly willing to broadcast to the world.

This is wicked, reprehensible behavior on their part — disgusting.

They fleece the flock, routinely. 

They bash a well-respected traditional priest without even so much as letting him claim his innocence after more than a hundred million people have considered him guilty; and for extras, they whoop it up at a condo in the Caymans they fail to write any press releases about.

And, oh yeah, they simply ignore the Pope's counsel to not release the names of accused priests where nothing as of yet has been determined.

Pathetic, revolting, disgusting — take your pick. This is an out of control, unaccountable, uncharitable, unjust circus, and that's apparently the case on just a normal day.

All over the country, innocent priests are having the bishops' charter for homopredator clergy weaponized against them, being punished and flushed down the toilet for the simple "crime" of believing the Faith and trying to help their flock get to Heaven.

Just exactly who's running the show in the chanceries, anyway?

TRANSCRIPT

As you know, Church Militant often reports on various aspects of the scandal of clerical sex abuse, as well as the conditions approved by various bishops which allow this scandal to continue.

This past weekend, the archdiocese of Detroit, under the leadership of Abp. Allen Vigneron, made a major gaffe in making public the name of a priest who was accused of a single act which allegedly occurred more than 40 years ago.

And full disclosure here: The accused priest, Fr. Eduard Perrone of Assumption Grotto in Detroit, is the pastor of a number of people here at the apostolate who are parishioners at Grotto.

We are not reporting on this because Fr. Perrone is the pastor of some of us, but rather, since we are based in this archdiocese, we actually know firsthand many of the personalities involved in this case, we have personal knowledge of this case, much more so than we do of other cases we report on.

In this regard, it would be remiss of us not to report and comment on this because we know many inside points regarding the matter. 

At each Mass at Grotto this past weekend, representatives appointed by Abp. Vigneron went to the podium and announced Fr. Perrone had been temporarily restricted from any public ministry.

They invited parishioners to go to the back of the Church after Mass and ask them any questions they may have, and they handed out this paper by the hundreds to parishioners saying the cause of Father's removal was due to a credible allegation of sexual abuse of a minor.

Since some Church Militant staff were in attendance for the noon Mass, we went back to ask questions, as we had been invited to.

What we ran into was a wall of silence and refusal to even entertain certain questions. I specifically asked Msgr. Michael Bugarin two questions. 

One, why in the statement did the archdiocese not print that Fr. Perrone was denying the allegations and declaring his innocence?

That line is not in Vigneron's statement, or the statement he approved of. Bugarin gave the ridiculous answer that "that's not part of the process," a line he repeated at least a dozen times regardless of the question or the questioner.

But here's the interesting point: Bugarin knew that Fr. Perrone had already denied the allegations both to him and to the Associated Press (AP) a month earlier.

AP had been tipped off about the story by some apparently vindictive individuals and had been calling around on the story for weeks, as the reporter freely admits in the final published version.

Bugarin had been interviewed for the same story and knew that Fr. Perrone had been as well, and here is the critical point: Perrone denied the allegations to the reporter and insisted on his innocence.

That was going to be printed, and Bugarin knew it. Yet, in the archbishop's approved-of statement, Bugarin refused to let Perrone's denial of the charges be part of the statement  — again, blaming the process.

The second and even more damning issue for Abp. Vigneron and his hand-picked episcopal vicar and delegate for matters of clergy misconduct, Msgr. Bugarin, is they actually went against guidelines published by the Pope for what bishops should do in these types of cases.

During the sex summit in Rome last February, various officials gave the Pope their thoughts on some measures that should be followed in these matters.

Pope Francis then published those points — 21 in all — and published them as guidelines that bishops should strongly consider when dealing with these cases.

When I showed Msgr. Bugarin these points, again published by the Holy See for the Pope, personally issued by him, Bugarin said he had no knowledge of them.

That's alarming for the point man for Abp. Vigneron, whose title, again, is "delegate for matters of clergy misconduct."

Frankly, it's his job to know this sort of thing. But he didn't, or at least says he didn't. It makes the archbishop look complicit in this error.

What I showed him on my cell phone as not only the list of 21 points, but this one in particular — point 14 — which reads, directly:

14. The right to defence: the principle of natural and canon law of presumption of innocence must also be safeguarded until the guilt of the accused is proven. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent the lists of the accused being published, even by the dioceses, before the preliminary investigation and the definitive condemnation. 

Bugarin and Abp. Vigneron completely disregarded that express desired guidelines of the Pope and not only announced Fr. Perrone's name from the pulpit, causing great upset at each of the Masses, but they also handed out these fliers with explicit detail of it being a report of alleged abuse of a minor and posted Fr. Perrone's name on the archdiocesan webpage of accused clergy — as the document itself makes clear in the first paragraph.

Again, Bugarin told me directly he had no knowledge of that document from the Pope, published on the Vatican's page for the world to see.

And here is why point 14 is so massively important and what Vigneron did so incredibly wrong.

In 2004, the Canon Law Society of America issued a text providing professional guidance to bishops and their lawyers on how to approach these cases.

In undertaking the preliminary investigation, a diocese would also violate the principle of confidentiality if it made a public announcement naming a priest and saying that he has been accused of sexual misconduct or if it issued a public statement about the findings issued by the diocesan Review Board … which are of their nature preliminary and canonically inconclusive. 

Such violations of confidentiality by a diocese irreparably damage the reputation of the accused and create a virtually insurmountable obstacle to the appropriate exercise of his ministry. 

[It] is difficult to see how his name could be restored adequately after the damage to his reputation was done. It is also possible that a priest might have a civil cause of action against a diocese for making libelous comments about him.

Detroit screwed up big time in the handling of this matter, not to mention granting an interview the AP right in the middle of their own internal investigation.

This is reprehensible treatment of a priest supported up and down the archdiocese, whose only crime may have been that he is a traditionalist and offers the Latin Mass and decades ago blew the whistle on the rampant homosexuality at the seminary and got it shut down by Pope John Paul.

The Deardon gay priests have hated his guts ever since.

Now interestingly, within a few hours, of our encounter with Bugarin, Perrone's name was suddenly taken down from the archdiocesan page of accused clergy, and then about 24 hours later, the archdiocese rolled out a whole new page, with never before seen categories of priests and their status.

Here it is, and as you can see, entirely new categories have been created, with Fr. Perrone being shifted from the former page category of "accused of sexual abuse of a minor" into the "under canonical review" category.

Seriously? Does the archbishop really think this mitigates or makes up for the severe damage done to his reputation — for Msgr. Bugarin standing stone-faced in the back of the parish refusing to say why Fr. Perrone wasn't allowed to at least claim his innocence?

Heck, even the secular media on the AP report extended him that courtesy.

That AP report has gone international; hundreds of millions of readers and viewers in Italy, London and every major daily in the U.S. have seen that story. It even ran across a ticker on Fox News.

All over the world, Fr. Perrone's name and reputation have been demolished by the actions of this archdiocese and their at least carelessness in not following common sense practices presented by the Canon Law Society of America and even promoted by Pope Francis himself.

And no, changing around a website on a holiday weekend hoping no one would notice doesn't cover it.

These actions by this archdiocese are despicable, especially given the highly dubious nature of them.

Why hasn't the archbishop allowed Fr. Perrone to publicly declare his innocence, especially in light of hundreds of millions of people who now think of him as a predator priest?

What in the Hades are archdiocesan officials doing on the phone with AP talking about a case they still don't have all the facts on?

Why did they distribute the damning statement to the media when the exalted "process" hadn't even gotten off the ground?

Is the process to really throw a priest who maintains his innocence to the wolves of the secular media?

Did the archdiocesan legal firm of Bodman actually write that statement and then the archbishop, in consult with Bugarin, just sign it and send it out?

If so, then who is actually running the diocese — the archbishop or the lawyers? Just who is calling the shots here?

How is it that the man in charge of all these cases doesn't know about the Canon Law Society guidelines or that the Pope — the Pope — had issued guidelines against this very sort of thing.

And to think, all of this coincides nicely with Abp. Vigneron's recently launched push to choke almost $200 million from the faithful in his "Unleash the Gospel" initiative.

How about unleashing the truth here? Why has Fr. Perrone been treated so disgustingly?

For the record, a Facebook effort is now gaining steam by former altar boys of Fr. Perrone — and there are many over the years — rushing to his defense, saying they have never seen or heard any such misdeeds by Fr. Perrone in any capacity at any time.

Dozens have signed, and the list is growing. In fact, the AP even went looking for other alleged victims and couldn't find any — even admitting that three they spoke with defended Fr. Perrone.

This evil which has engulfed the Church, the evil of homopredation, has created this climate whereby bishops will betray even faithful clergy on the advice of lawyers and incompetent chancery personnel.

Archbishop Vigneron, the buck stops with you. You said a couple of years ago that you were introducing a "new DNA" — your words — into the archdiocese and things were going to be different.

That there would be transparency and accountability. Well, if you ever had a chance to make good on those promises, now's your chance. To Hades with the "process" that your point man is so in love with.

Let Fr. Perrone go on camera, in his collar, and announce his claim to innocence, especially since it was your press release that has blackened his name all over the world.

TRANSCRIPT

The war going on in the Church these days, while predominantly a spiritual war, is also a battle of personalities. And those battles are not so easily squeezed into good guys and bad guys categories.

We are all painfully aware of the bad guys, the homoheretic, dissident, social justice, heterodox crowd that runs the show from top to bottom that Viganò called out.

But there is a different battle going on in the good guys' camp, and by good guys we mean the more or less faithful Catholic crowd that largely rejects the theology and politics of the bad guys.

But there's more to this war than just choosing up sides and being a good guy. There is the difficult and delicate question of how to respond to the bad guys.

And this is a war unto itself in the good guys' camp. It could be largely broken down into two subgroups: the "Deplorable Catholics" vs. the "Country Club Catholics."

The deplorables just say it like it is, the "call 'em as we see 'em" crowd.  

It's from this group that you hear the calls for bishops to resign, for a RICO investigation to clean house, the demands that bishops start acting like bishops, the condemnation of the homosexual current, the support for Abp. Viganò — in short, the non-establishment crowd.

In the opposite corner are those who consider themselves the Catholic elite, the country club crowd who consider it gauche to speak about such things as an actively gay bishop covering up for his loverboy homopredator priest.

They don't necessarily deny it, they just don't want any discussion of it. It ruins the Chateaubriand just as it arrives at the table.

For them, all this is just so "distressing." But their money or influence or willingness to remain quiet has bought them access to the bishops' establishment, and they get to brag about having just come from lunch with the cardinal.

They get honors and awards for teaching at colleges or writing books that they go on the Catholic establishment media and crow about in all the phony humility they can generate.

They are the sponsors of conferences or the invited speakers at the conferences. They get interviewed by the establishment media crowd because they are all part of the same country club — just sitting at different tables.

You'll find all kinds of niceties and politeness at the Catholic country club. There will be the visible crucifix appropriately placed, with assorted statues and so forth scattered about.

The likes of George Weigel and others will be holding forth in some corner talking about his next book and speaking engagement, neither of which will be of any significance in the great war going on in the Church right now.  

It will be an unmistakably "Catholic" environment, true. But you will not hear a word about how to address the war head-on.

Direct confrontation is not allowed on country club grounds. The overarching rule is: in all things, politeness — even if that means politeness dictates we not talk plainly about the crisis.

It's a mindset really — a personality type. 

Many of the Country Club Catholics got their tickets punched precisely because they are more like the bishops than the regular Massgoers. They care more about image than reality.

They like hob-nobbing, feeling important, sipping martinis, talking about inane topics and so forth. Their gatherings could best be described with the phrase from F. Scott Fitzgerald: They gather where they can be "rich together."

This is a closed society, no doubt about it, despite the view looking in through the window that appears Catholic.

Real Catholics are born for combat — but not this crowd.

This is not so much the hoity-toity crowd as it is the haughty-taughty one who don't really want much to do with the hoi polloi, deplorable folks outside the country club.

There's just too much for the elites to lose if they started paying close attention to what the deplorables were saying and writing and giving talks about.

They would lose their place at the table of respect of the bishops and other elites they socialize with now.

Carl Anderson from the Knights of Columbus wouldn't invite George Weigel to his summer gatherings, and Tim Busch, who runs the Napa Institute, wouldn't get the rest of the crowd to drop thousands and thousands of dollars per head to "be rich, together."

Doug Keck and Michael Warsaw, who run EWTN and have steered it far away from its Mother Angelica vision and mission, would have a heck of a time getting press passes to cover the bishops' events.

All these "good guys" who do for the moment command the majority of the discussion because of their relationships with the bishops, at the end of the day accomplish nothing.

It's more important to them to feel as though they have accomplished something and tackled the crisis head-on than to actually have done so.

The Church has burned down to the ground while they have been golfing with the bishop and writing huge checks to the annual diocesan fundraiser.

And for what? Have any of them lifted a finger, risked one modicum of their beloved "respect," to help truly fight the evil in the Church?

When Weigel, for example, was writing his tomes about John Paul — which catapulted him into the elite crowd — did he ever delve deeply into the dark side of John Paul's papacy, the sinister influence of Cdl. Dziwisz and the control exercised over him by Theodore McCarrick?

Where are the tomes written about the rape of seminarians by the hundreds — still ongoing, by the way — passed off as consensual sex; the homosexual bishop Daniel Ryan and his foraging city parks for teenage male prostitutes; the embezzling of millions by bishops like Michael Bransfield; the predominant homosexual activity of thousands of men in the priesthood; the persecution of good priests by dissident bishops like Cupich in Chicago?

Can you imagine dropping any of those bombs at the upcoming Napa Institute gathering, or showing up at the next annual national Knights of Columbus gala?

The pearl-clutching would be astounding, including by a good number of the more effete bishops who like using their office to hang around the rich as well.

The whole structure of how business is conducted — stratification of elite Catholics who are the only ones who have access and then do nothing with that access for fear of losing it — this whole stinking, revolting mess needs to be burned to the ground.

This is not how Our Blessed Lord designed His Church, it is not a country club with the deplorables hanging around the outside looking in.

The rich, the influencers, the suck-ups in the Catholic media, the folks who have made their parasitic living off the patrimony of the Church, all of these have contributed to Her destruction and demise.

They do not take up arms against the heretics and homosexual current in the hierarchy because the people they would have to take up arms against are the very bishops and senior Churchmen whose company they so desperately want to be in.

Does Tim Busch ever stand up before a crowd of bishops and demand they publicly denounce Fr. James Martin's leading souls to Hell? 

Does George Weigel ever speak at conferences and denounce the bishops' embrace of illegal immigration for which they receive billions of dollars from the federal government?

Does EWTN ever air programs asking why the bishops will move mountains about social justice Democratic Party issues but remain so soft-spoken about abortion and the Catholic politicos who support it?

On that point, if the bishops put one-tenth of the effort into the pro-life cause that they do into the illegal immigration effort, Roe would have toppled decades ago.

The bishops, as a body, are corrupt as hell, led by devils like Cupich, Wuerl, Farrell, etc., yet the Country Club Catholics simply do not want to face this reality squarely in the face.

They hate war, even when it's necessary, because, well, it's hard to fight with a martini in one hand and some delightful glazed shrimp appetizer in the other.

They must be terribly insecure within themselves to want the approval of such a wicked bunch of men, which makes you wonder: Which group of Catholics at the end of the day is really deplorable?

TRANSCRIPT

It's crunch time for Franciscan University at Steubenville (FUS). Huge donors are ticked off, as are parents and alumni, that homoheretic Cdl. Blase Cupich is going to be speaking at the college which dubs itself as being "passionately Catholic."

It is a well-known fact that when it comes to Catholicism, the only thing Cupich is passionate about is fomenting revolution against the Church.

He is pro-gay, pro-sacrilegious Holy Communion, attacks and persecutes good priests like St. John Cantius priest Fr. Frank Phillips as well as Fr. Paul Kalchik.

He has not turned over to the Illinois attorney general the names of all accused clergy, notably Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, a story which Church Militant broke two weeks ago when the secret files were given to us by a whistleblower.

Cupich was denounced by Abp. Viganò as being part of the homosexual cabal running the Church into the ground — and owing his episcopal advancement to homopredator Theodore McCarrick.

Cupich has ordered his clergy at every diocese he's been bishop to not attend pro-life prayer rallies or events at abortion killing centers.

At the Vatican sex summit last February, he went out of his way to prevent the topic of homosexuality within the clergy even being brought up as a discussion point.

He has turned a blind eye to active homosexual priests in his own archdiocese.

He continues to allow dissident priests like Fr. Michael Pfleger to preach heresy and dissent.

He lied about the context of an interview by local Chicago NBC station and even had a letter read from the pulpits attacking the station — the famous "rabbit hole" controversy.

The list with this man never ends. He's only been archbishop of Chicago for not quite five years and has already racked up an impressive list of anti-Catholic moves and comments.

He worked with the lying, cheating Donald Wuerl behind the scenes with Pope Francis to derail any real efforts at substantive reform of predatory clergy in the United States by pushing for and getting the "bishops will investigate themselves" proposal made official.

For all the above reasons, and then some, Cupich was voted the least liked bishop in the United States.

And now, for this disgrace of a cleric, Franciscan is throwing open wide its doors.

But officials at Franciscan are putting distance between themselves and the errant cardinal, saying that the school itself didn't actually invite Cupich, that he came along with the package of speakers who were part of a larger group that had been involved with last October's Vatican Youth Synod.

Well, OK, fair enough. Cupich got brought in, like gum on a shoe, and the school didn't know that.

Well, now they do. The school now has two options: insure Cupich does not set foot on the campus in any official capacity or allow him to speak and suffer the consequences from all the bad press and severe drop in donations — as well as applicants for future students.

Cupich is the very model of everything wrong in the hierarchy, and no one who has supported FUS in its mission to produce students who are "passionately Catholic" can agree with his official presence, however it came about.

Administrators have a number of options when it comes to making sure he doesn't appear:

The time has come for Franciscan, as it is coming more frequently for all sorts of Catholics — decision time.

Which side are you on? The revolutionaries, the homosexual cabal which has operational control of the Church? Or tradition, the Magisterium and the glory of Catholic truth.

Franciscan has not sought out this war — true. Privately, some in the administration are expressing grief over the situation and do not want him on campus.

But this war is not private. Sides must be chosen, publicly. As the expression goes, you may not be interested in war — ah, but war is in interested in you.

The war for the soul of the Church has come to Franciscan; all that remains to be seen at this point is which side the school will choose.

At least one major donor Church Militant is aware of has contacted the school, enraged at the news of Cupich being given a speaking platform, and demanded his hundreds of thousands in donations be returned immediately.

He is even threatening a lawsuit to get his money back. Whatever merit such a suit would have or not have is beside the point, however.

It would demonstrate the depth of the crisis and create a public inflection point for school and the Church at large.

Old gay cardinals and archbishops, the revolutionaries of the 1970s have surged back under Francis, and this time, they have moved from parishes into the very nerve center of the Church and seized control.

Nothing less than that is going on and faithful Catholics are mad as hell about the non-stop encroachment on the Faith and the destruction of the Church and their families that has come about as a result.

What happens now with the Franciscan/Cupich affair may very well turn into the "shot heard round the Church," whichever route Franciscan chooses.

Cupich's official presence on campus will bring about the destruction of Franciscan's identity. 

The school disinviting him publicly, for the truthful reasons, will be a stake in the ground that faithful Catholics will be able to rally around.

Each choice will have its consequences, both in the near term and the future.

Franciscan, the moment has arrived. It's decision time: tradition or revolution?

TRANSCRIPT

It's time once again for the Fourth of July celebrations in America to get rolling and we thought we'd take the opportunity to point out a little something, a two-headed hydra, the Democratic Party and the U.S. bishops' conference.

First, let's look at the Democrats and this guaranteed losing stance.

Yep, all 10 Dem candidates on stage last week promised that their plan is to take your tax dollars and pay health care costs for illegal immigrants, and some of those tax dollars coming from actual citizens who don't have health insurance themselves.

Turning to the second head of the hydra, the U.S. bishops have more than a dozen times issued pronouncements against Trump's enforcement of current immigration laws, some of the exact same laws that Obama used to enforce.

Curiously, when Democrat Obama would make speeches or give interviews about illegal immigrants, the U.S. bishops just let it slide.

And why would the bishops not thunder against Obama, you might ask. That's a good question. A question for the record that the Catholic establishment media never asks, because they can't tick off their meal ticket.

There are really two reasons the bishops are down with open borders and staging photo ops at the border, and running off a flood of press releases damning Trump.

One reason is their miserable track record of running the Church has resulted in a depressing demographic reality.

For decades, Catholics were about 25% of the total U.S. population — for decades.

But as the Church of Nice, modernist homoheretics slowly tipped the scales and got control of the levers of power, the population of Catholics relative to the total population began to shrink.

Today, it's down to about 21% of the population. And here's the truth under those numbers, white European-descent Catholics, in relation to the total population, comprise only about 13 percent.

That is a falling off the cliff — without Hispanic Catholics, many of whom are here illegally, Catholics, who used to be about one out of every four Americans, are now only about one out of every eight or nine.

Most illegal immigrants in the United States come across that southern border and are majority Catholic, so the bishops have latched onto that reality and are using it to shore up their flagging numbers in the pews.

But more than that, money is the overwhelming factor.  

Look at these financial numbers from 2016 for Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and Catholic Charities.

Catholic Relief Services received a staggering $426,943,000 in U.S. federal tax dollars. Those federal monies accounted for 65% of the agency's total 2016 budget.

And Catholic Charities received a not too shabby $202,000,000. 

The bishops are getting literally hundreds of millions of dollars from Uncle Sam, and much of this money is earmarked specifically for coping with illegal immigration and refugee resettlement efforts.

The government is not really equipped to administer programs of this size, so they contract the work out — in this case, a half-billion dollars worth of contracts to the bishops.

Interesting to note, the U.S. bishops get as much money from Washington as Planned Parenthood gets.

And here's another deception by silence on the part of the bishops, they never tell people in the pews when they take up the annual collection for CRS and Catholic Charities that, presuming you are legal and a taxpayer, that you have already contributed to these collections through your taxes.

When Obama first came to office, the USCCB was directly paid a whopping $91 million dollars for Syrian refugee resettlement programs.

As a result, one out of every three dioceses in the country suddenly opened up a refugee resettlement office to cash in.

In fact, another $30-plus million also poured directly into the bishops coffers from Obama's White House for other programs.

The child killer in chief must have been very grateful to the mitered class for having delivered him the majority Catholic vote in '08.

But for the supreme show of hypocrisy from the bishops who are always so chest-thumping about welcoming the stranger and so forth — look at the places most of them live.

You couldn't get past the gates or over the walls with a small army, and of course, Church HQ itself is completely surrounded with a gigantic wall built specifically to keep out potential Muslim invaders, along with others.

And that's because walls work, which is why so many of the hierarchy have themselves safely ensconced behind them, including the Pope.

And oh yeah, if you somehow manage to get around or over those walls, you'll get shot and killed — so much for the death penalty being "inadmissable," to quote Bishop Robert Barron.

The U.S. bishops are simply opposed, flat-out, to border security in complete lockstep with their Democratic sugar-daddies.

They make the irrational argument that the "first duty" of government is to welcome the foreigner and the stranger, specifically as the Immigration Office at USCCB HQ says "to welcome the foreigner out of charity and respect for the human person. Persons have the right to immigrate and thus government must accommodate this right to the greatest extent possible, especially financially blessed nation."

This is a total perversion of Catholic teaching; it's Democratic Party talking points made to sound like Church teaching.

The bishops say the "second duty (of government)is to secure one's border and enforce the law for the sake of the common good."

So let's think about this. The first duty of government is to let everybody in who wants to migrate, and the second duty is to enforce the borders.

Well, if you are letting everybody in, then what need does America have for borders and if anyone who want to migrate to the United States gets to come in, how long before the government no longer exists?

A nation is defined by its borders in the most fundamental reality.

But all of this would actually be an argument worth having if the bishops were not getting cumulatively billions of dollars from the government, much of which has been severely cut back by President Trump, and they themselves were actually not living behind walls and or had immigrants sleeping in their palaces.

Those swanky digs up in the woods of New York that Cardinal Dolan commandeered for himself — remember, that $4 million pad — it sure looks like you cram a few dozen immigrant families in there, Your Eminence.

Hypocrisy, money, privilege, sucking at the teats of the Democrats — what a dastardly lot.

Exactly how does a hierarchy maintain any independence when its very infrastructure is supported by federal tax dollars?

Want to know why pro-abort Catholic Democrats are never denounced? Just look at the issue of illegal immigration, the wall and the money handed to them and you have your answer.

When the basket gets passed next time in your parish to contribute to any of this, drop in a note saying, "No thanks, I already paid you with my taxes."

TRANSCRIPT

If there is one point that is emerging in the wake of the sex abuse scandal, it's this: A number of bishops are simply blowing off the faithful.

They display an arrogance that is dumbfounding, a lack of care for the flock that necessitates they just resign. They show little love for the Church, little love for the flock, almost total disregard of the truth.

They treat the Church like it's their own personal playground and demonstrate a "drop dead" attitude to the faithful.

While there are a huge number of examples that fit the bill here, we want to focus your attention on three because they did stuff most recently.

First, Cardinal Joseph Tobin, a hypocrite if there ever was one because he is a prince of the Church — the Church he continues to give the finger to because of his embrace of sodomy.

And for the record, that is what he is supporting — not just a person having an orientation that is homosexual, but actually acting on it. He embraces all of it.

This past weekend at Our Lady of Grace in Hoboken at 9 a.m., the regularly scheduled parish was offered for the second time in support of sodomy — the occasion being the homosexual pride of the month of June.

A good number of actual Catholics, unlike the cardinal, the priest and the participants demonstrated and prayed in front of the Church in reparation for the sacrilege.

As for Tobin, he's all down with men having sex with men and labeling the deadly sin a "gift from God."

Let's shift over a little to the west to the diocese of Buffalo and the disgrace of man who is dripping with so much hubris, he won't even consider resigning despite lying about the number of rapist clergy in his diocese — most of them homopredators — as well as the keeping in service at the altar, men he absolutely knows are active homosexuals.

Richard Malone is holding what he laughingly terms "listening sessions" but which he apparently means everyone listens to him and shuts the heck up.

Last week, he refused to let a survivor speak at the listening sessions, blaming schedule timing and the agenda. Of course, he didn't place the victim on the agenda at the next listening session.

And for the record, this is the same bishop who actually put the former rector of the seminary, Joseph Gatto, back into parish ministry after hed been bounced for soliciting sex from his own seminarians.

Likewise, three priests he had to pull for lewd and filthy sexual conversations in front of seminarians — hey, they're safe as well; stuck in the penalty box for a few minutes and back in service. Anything gay goes down well with Malone.

For example, here is, word for word, what he said at the recent listening session about homosexual men who are priests, according to attendees: "Homosexual priests are here to stay, that will not change, and the canonical requirement for gay candidates is to be chaste for three years before ordination."

Apparently, what they do after ordination, he doesn't give a hoot about.

Then there's the king of the homosexual hill when it comes to all things gay, John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky, who twists Scripture around like the devil he is to make it sound as though God actually actively creates, by an act of divine will, people with homosexual orientation.

He authored a prayer saying it and quoted psalms in a diabolical disorientation of the mind of the Holy Spirit saying homosexuals are "wonderfully made."

He spent a lot of face time with Cardinal Blase Cupich at the recently concluded gathering in St. Louis of dissident priests. 

Those two devils have something cooking, and it won't be the promotion of the truth, you can bet on it.

So where are all the other bishops? They know about this? These stories and articles and social media postings are all over the place.

Every day that agent of Hell, James Martin, leads more souls to his "father" — and still not a word from any of these hireling shepherds.

They say nothing — apparently not even privately.

Now some, no doubt steeped in Church of Nice niceties and protocols, will focus in much more on calling bishops devils — devils who lead the faithful away from their heavenly home — than focus on the actual evil.

We are perfectly happy to leave that question to Our Lord at our individual judgments.

Church Militant will have a ready explanation for what we have said; pretty darn sure that the Church of Nice gang, including the fake news Catholic establishment media, will have not a word to say.

They are enablers of this filth, this evil, and they have let their personal opinions of us cloud their objectivity.

They don't want to report on what we report because the homosexual bishop crowd will cut them off and their days of carrying their water and writing press releases for them disguised as news articles will be at an end.

And yes, we're looking right at you EWTN and CNA. 

So here we have, on the record, successors of the Apostles saying: Sodomy is OK; that God actively wills and creates the homosexual condition; that gay men are here in the priesthood to stay.

And yet nothing, not a peep from the enabling Catholic establishment media.

They would have apologized for Judas and made up excuses for him. In fact, too bad for Judas that EWTN and CNA weren't around, he'd have come off much better in the gospels than a thieving traitor.

Pay close attention, faithful Catholics, the ranks of the bishops are filled with devils, and they are supported in their evil by a group of small-c "catholics" more concerned with protecting the establishment than telling you the truth.

But good thing it isn't a massive, massive crisis.

In about seven years or so, by current demographic trends, the Church of Nice along with its cover-up specialists in the establishment media will have completely imploded.

The rate of self-destruction of this crowd is accelerating as the clock winds down on them.

So stay faithful, the few of you there are right now. 

In a short while, you will be all that is left, and we will have survived this demonic experience and begin to rebuild and restore.

And we will have learned that the curse of the Church is Judas bishops — devils with miters.

Well, last week's actions by Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York just may catapult him over the top of Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich for most disliked bishop in the nation.

After friendly chancery officials became aware of the exact time and plan for the transfer of Sheen's body, as well as Church Militant, we laid our plans to make sure the event was videoed.

Cardinal Dolan spent an estimated million bucks in legal fees trying to prevent this scene from ever happening.

He'd been totally shot down and embarrassed by the New York courts over three years, who repeatedly ruled he had to release the body to Sheen's relative, Joan. 

But he kept spending not his money and appealing and losing and ultimately had to release the remains so they could be returned to Peoria, Illinois, and the cause for his sainthood proceed.

So here are some highlights of this debacle, which ended well after many prayers.

Folks present in the cathedral tell us Dolan was not present at the disinterment inside St. Patrick's.

He certainly was a no-show outside as the transfer box with the casket inside was brought down the 51st side stairs and placed into the hearse.

His absence was noted and highly criticized online — seen as one final snub to the future saint.

Sheen was a lightning rod in New York during his days there, owing to having severely ticked off homosexualist Cardinal Francis Spellman.

Spellman, you will recall, was a groomer and protégé of Theodore McCarrick who went on to sexually assault dozens and dozens of seminarians. Spellman and Sheen crossed swords over a financial dispute involving sizable sums pouring in for Sheen's work. 

Spellman demanded Sheen give him the money, Sheen said no, they took it to the Vatican, Rome ruled in favor of Sheen; and from that moment on, Spellman put out the word that Sheen was persona non grata.

Sheen was not liked by the New York clergy, largely because it was career suicide to do so under Spellman.

But his continued orthodoxy in the face of modernism invading the Church was also despised.

Dolan's absence was seen as the final act of dissing the popular preacher archbishop in a long line of such non-official, official treatment.

Not only did he not show up, he didn't want anyone else seeing it either, privately ordering a media and camera blackout, an order Church Militant completely ignored.

That failed media blackout effort was the reason he had demanded behind the scenes that everything start at 5 a.m., which compelled everyone involved to actually arrive during the 4 o'clock hour in the dead of the night.

That meant that Sheen's 94-year-old niece, a very sweet and gentle old lady, had to be up and ready and on her way to Manhattan at a ridiculous hour.

But Dolan wasn't concerned about that as he slept soundly in his bed above Madison Avenue, and while he couldn't find the time to get up and bid farewell to the future saint at the stupid hour he had imposed on everyone else, he actually did manage to venture out of his Madison Avenue comfort to make a dedication ceremony for New York Mets pitcher Tom Seaver.

Seaver was a phenom, nicknamed "Tom Terrific," but the disparity between refusing to show up at Sheen's disinterment and actually showing up at an honor event for a baseball player has irked faithful Catholics even more.

Dolan has helped run the Church in New York into the ground and has largely done so almost single-handedly.

From pushing for the invasion of gays into the St. Patrick's Day parade, to lying about and covering up the notorious case of Fr. Peter Miqueli and his gay-for-pay prostitute, to allowing multiple active gay pastors to remain in Manhattan parishes, Dolan may very well go down as the most "gay" cardinal in New York — and given that one of his predecessors was Spellman, that's saying a lot.

But there is one final point related to money, because the homoheresy always is related to money.

Dolan is busy fleecing his flock for $200 million for his fundraising campaign. But at the same time, he's closing down schools and parishes, driving the archdiocese into the red and spending a million in legal fees trying to block Sheen's transfer.

But he has managed to secure a very nice little "get away" for himself: an over-the-top estate in Sloatsburg, New York where Dolan spends a lot of time — a multimillion dollar property that comes complete with a 70-foot long indoor lap pool that has been described as a Venetian canal right in the middle of the house.

It was given to the archdiocese as a retreat center for priests, but Dolan, always the loving father to his clergy, didn't want them, some of whom are elderly, having to walk up stairs, so he made the sacrifice and decided to lock it down as his own weekend digs.

Given the state of affairs in his former archdiocese, it's a good thing Sheen is now back home in Peoria, as Bishop Jenky and the other good people there continue his case for sainthood.

He got out of New York just in the nick of time.

TRANSCRIPT

For five years now, Church Militant has been sponsoring an annual men's conference we call Strength and Honor.

They've all been very successful, as evidenced by the number of returning participants each year who also bring their sons or buds along with them the next year.

Strength and Honor last year happened just as the McCarrick news was breaking and the ripples had started rippling.

But — big but here — it was before the Pennsylvania grand jury report was released, as well as before Archbishop Viganò had dropped the bomb that there is a corrupt mafia running the Church, fueled by a homosexualist current within the hierarchy.

This year's conference will be taking all that into account; not so much the details which we provide you constantly, but rather the effect all this is having on Catholic life and most importantly what you can learn from it.

This year's theme is "Take Back Your Home: Prepare to Be Challenged."

What the state of affairs in the Church is proving is that the threat to your family and friends is greater than ever and that real men need to step forward and start putting things back in order.

But we aren't going to be focusing on those great big 60,000-foot macro-level issues. We are going to be talking much closer to home — what you can and need to do.

All this filth in the Church is directly responsible for the rot of the culture, and that rot, that sewage, is backing up right into your basement, your daily life with family and friends.

Minds are being polluted in the culture which are having a direct impact on your sons, your cousins, your workmates, your college buddies — current or past.

While we can talk about great big cultural issues, the truth is, like politics, cultural rot is local — local to your loved ones specifically.

A toxic femininity has descended over the West which demands truth be sacrificed for the sake of never giving offense. And loads of men today have bought into that poison and downed the Kool-Aid.

Sacrifice by men is now routinely mocked as though there is something rotten with it. The idea of men living their lives by principles and rules for the sake of keeping spiritual and societal order is vilified.

Men often forget that we are the first line of defense against the diabolical filth, and given the level of crisis, we now need to man up — literally.

It doesn't matter if you are older, married and with a family or still just a young man stepping out into the world on your own for the first time, or somewhere in between.

Whoever and whatever your state in life, and this includes clergy, men must re-infiltrate the home and the Church and start some hand-to-hand combat with this evil.

Men, as men, are discounted and marginalized and this must stop. In fact, it has happened precisely because so many men simply let it happen; again, it must stop — all of it.

Now, how that can happen in your own life, your personal life, is the overall subject of this conference. We aren't going to be talking about grand strategies or organizing million-man marches through the streets of D.C.

We are talking about a single-man march through the wreckage of your life and those you love.

We want you leaving this conference with actual fixes for what you need to do, because in truth, the only perfect man is Our Lord, which means every single one of us can not only do better but must do better.

The barbarians are not just at the gates, they're in your living rooms and you must throw 'em out.

You must take back your home, and given the scope of this year's Strength and Honor Conference, we have subtitled it "Prepare to Be Challenged" — and we mean it.

We have as guest speakers Jesse Romero, who will leave no stone unturned in your personal inventory of what to do; Doug Barry, who is ready to jar you into action by showing you how you have let much of this happen and what you need to do to change course; our own Simon Rafe will boil it all down to 20 rules for you to live by, very practical, hands-on, change-your-outlook-type points; and I'll be talking about how men have failed to respond to lies and falsehoods and how that must change immediately.

So we hope that's enough to get your engines stoked and ready to commit, which you can do by just clicking on the link and signing up.

Again, dads, bring your sons. Sons, tell your dads — sign up.

This society is going to Hell because individual homes are going to Hell. What is society anyway, other than just a giant collection of individuals, most of whom have been poisoned?

The great Catholic challenge in our day and age is this: Men must take back their homes, their households, their country, their culture and their Church.

Are you men, or are you wimps? 

That question, or a close variation, may be the very thing this generation of men may very well have to answer when they stand before the Perfect Man at our judgments.

Click on the link, and sign up today.

TRANSCRIPT

A couple days ago, Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich gave an interview to the Chicago Tribune where he lied to the reporter.

According to the Chicago Tribune article, "Cupich noted that the archdiocese reported every allegation of abuse to the Cook County state attorney's office. The archdiocese turned over to the attorney general's office thousands of documents, including those related to unsubstantiated claims of abuse."

But the problem is that's not true. It's simply not true.

In 1993, a case was officially lodged against Cardinal Joseph Bernardin claiming that Bernardin sexually assaulted a minor.

The case was filed by the actual victim and officially responded to on archdiocesan letterhead multiple times (as you can see here). The documents exist, plain and simple.

Church Militant obtained these documents from the archdiocesan secret files through a chancery insider fed up with the cover-up.

On getting hold of them, Church Militant contacted Cupich directly and asked about the information contained in them — no response.

We have since sent information to his communications department — no response.

Cupich is lying, flat-out lying, when he says all cases, even those unsubstantiated, were turned over to law enforcement because Church Militant has in our possession at least one case that absolutely was not.

For the record, as we indicated to Cupich and his staff, Church Militant, as part of our Action Arm initiative, has, in fact, now turned over the damning evidence to the Illinois attorney general's office for law enforcement to pursue.

This kind of rot in the Church is unconscionable. No one, not even a cardinal — especially a cardinal — is allowed to lie and cover up and deceive the public.

You couldn't find a more blatant example than this. It couldn't be more cut and dry.

An official charge was made in 1993 of sex abuse of a minor, which was acknowledged multiple times by the Chicago archdiocese on their own letterhead. Now, Cupich says all cases were turned over to law enforcement, but this one was not.

He was informed others — meaning us — have the documents, which means they exist, and yet he goes on public record and lies about it.

The noose is tightening around these lies.

Three very simple questions for Cupich:

Answer the questions.

It's really not that complicated.

TRANSCRIPT

An in-depth Church Militant investigation has turned up a career-long track record of accusations against former Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin that not only was he a homopredator his entire career but that at various stops in his career, many of those sexual assaults were tied to satanic rituals.

Current Cardinal Blase Cupich has reported none of this to the Illinois attorney general, deliberately covering up at least one serious allegation.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to this Church Militant special report, following up on our last investigation into Cardinal Joseph Bernardin and the Chicago archdiocese's history of covering up his sordid past.

Bernardin's entire public career was one of warm relationships with promoters of homosexuality — in fact, beyond his career and even his life; he explicitly requested the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus to sing at his wake.

Bernardin was ordained in April of 1952 by his bishop in Charleston, South Carolina, John J. Russell.

In the case of the 1957 rape of the minor in South Carolina we previously reported, the victim identified not only then-Fr. Bernardin, but also Bishop Russell and that the assault was part of a satanic ritual.

Church Militant was handed secret files from the vaults of the Chicago archdiocese by whistleblowers there.

In this June 1993 letter to the U.S. nuncio at the time, Archbishop Agostino Cacciavillan, the victim expressly states, "I was raped by then-Father Bernardin as part of a satanic ritual. He accompanied Bishop Russell, who was the 'celebrant.'"

A few lines later, the victim says, "Bishop Russell had been the patron of Father Bernardin, and I hesitate to think how many Bernardin has advanced in the Church and in his brotherhood."

Cacciavillan did nothing about the charges against Bernardin, which was a pattern for him.

Around the exact same timeframe, when confronted with direct evidence of homosexual rapist Bishop Daniel Ryan of Springfield, Illinois, Cacciavillan, Cardinal Francis George, Bishop Joseph Imesch and Bishop George Lucas refused to conduct any investigation into their notorious brother bishop.

Ryan eventually had to step down in disgrace once the truth came out — the truth that Cacciavillan had unsuccessfully tried to cover up.

Cacciavillan was one of the Vatican's men who defended Boston Cardinal Bernard Law as the homopredator sex abuse clergy story was breaking on the front pages of The Boston Globe a few years later.

Bernardin was fatherless as a boy and teenager, his father having died of cancer when Bernardin was 6. He was a retiring, quiet, unathletic, studious youth.

He developed a great interest in biology, enrolling at the University of South Carolina as a pre-med major, telling family and friends how much he wanted to be a doctor.  

Then, all of a sudden, for no clear reason, he announced his desire to become a priest, which came as a shock to his family, who told the Chicago Tribune in 1996: 

"Then in his third semester, right out of the blue, Joe told us he was leaving college because he wanted to become a priest," his sister said. "I remember we were all walking up the stairs, and my mother and I had to sit down and think that one over."

Russell ordained Bernardin in 1952, just three months after another priest arrived in the diocese of Charleston from the Maryknoll Missionaries in New York.

Father Frederick Hopwood was trained in upstate New York for six years to be a Maryknoll priest, but seemingly out of the blue up and mysteriously abandoned his community just six months after ordination.

For no apparent reason, he simply left the missionaries and asked Bishop Russell to be incardinated as a priest in the diocese of Charleston.

Extensive research fails to turn up any links between the New Jersey native, New York-trained priest and South Carolina.  

But what is known is that almost immediately after arriving, Hopwood and Bernardin quickly became close associates, and each was promoted by Russell in short order — Bernardin being named chancellor at the same time Hopwood was named assistant chancellor.

The two shared a residence together at the cathedral rectory for the next number of years — from 1954 until 1966 when Bernardin left for Atlanta where he became auxiliary bishop.

Roughly 40 years later in 1994, Hopwood was eventually busted and convicted for sex abuse involving hundreds of teenage males.

Many of these sexual assaults occurred in the same years he was a housemate with Bernardin at the cathedral rectory, where a number of the alleged assaults happened.

In resulting lawsuits against the diocese of Charleston, Bernardin's name "came up a large number of times," according to one of Hopwood's victims.

One victim told Roman Catholic Faithful that he had been sodomized by both Hopwood and another priest, but couldn't identify the priest because he had been blindfolded.

The victim also said in the filings that "Hopwood had presided over satanic rituals involving animals in the woods where some of his victims were abused."

But Hopwood wasn't the only close associate of Bernardin busted for sexual assault of teenage males.

In the mid-1990s, the exact same time the original alleged rape victim from 1957 was writing to the Vatican, the nuncio, the archdiocese of Chicago and even Pope John Paul, pleading for a hearing, a string of charges and arrests were being made of Bernardin's closest associates from his days in Charleston.

One after another, Bernardin's buddy priests were being arrested and prosecuted for sexual assaults of combined hundreds of teenage males, a large number of assaults having happened right at the very time Bernardin was chancellor of Charleston.

Among the notables: Fr. Paul Seitz, Fr. Eugene Condon and Fr. Justin Goodwin, with some of them also having lived with Bernardin in the cathedral rectory of St. John the Baptist in Charleston where some of the homosexual, satanic abuse was alleged to have happened.

But most notable is the case, again of Msgr. Fredrick Hopwood, the priest accused in lawsuits of homosexual assaults as part of satanic rituals and close friend of Bernardin.

When criminal and civil charges were filed against Hopwood in the early 1990s, Bernardin, who by this time had ascended to archbishop in Chicago, made the unprecedented move of immediately dispatching the archdiocesan law firm to Hopwood's defense — the costly and prestigious firm, Mayer, Platt and Brown, now known as Mayer Brown.

The Chicago faithful were never told that Bernardin was using their funds to pay for the high-powered defense of his close associate accused of multiple satanic-inspired homosexual assaults. Did Bernardin want something not coming out?

It's worth underscoring at this point that these charges against former priest friends of Bernardin, which caused him to dispatch his lawyers to clean things up, were hitting the archdiocese at the exact same time the original charges of satanic ritualized rape against Bernardin himself were coming into the Chicago chancery.

However, there was still much more to come, just as Bernardin was fighting a two-front war, with charges against himself, as well as his "buddies" as the lawsuits described them, yet another round of charges of the precise same nature came pouring into Chicago from former seminarians in the diocese of Winona, Minnesota.

These seminarians charged that while he was archbishop of Cincinnati, Bernardin and some other clerics, including bishop friends of his, would travel to Winona's Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary and engage in homosexual acts with them involving satanic rituals.

None of these cases, the original 1957 rape allegation against Bernardin when he was a priest in Charleston, the suggestion he was intimately tied to more sodomistic satanic assaults by his buddy priests and the fresh charges of seminarians being sodomized by him and other clerics — again tied to satanic rituals — none of the plaintiffs in any of these cases knew each other or, before the days of social media, had any real way of knowing each other's stories.

Likewise, as Church Militant broke earlier this week, the string of allegations against Bernardin being a homopredator continues to lengthen with the serious accusation from James Grein that Bernardin abused him in 1977.

While Bernardin was cardinal-archbishop of Chicago, he launched the nation's first diocesan gay office, AGLO, Archdiocesan Gay and Lesbian Outreach, an office still in existence today.

He appointed a notoriously active gay priest to the pastorship of Resurrection parish on Chicago's Northwest Side — a parish Bernardin designated as gay.

That pastor, Fr. Daniel Montalbano, was found dead in his rectory hooked up to a sex machine surrounded by hundreds of videos and magazines of gay porn.

Again, Bernardin insisted the city's Gay Men's Chorus sing at his wake.

During his career, he promoted and protected known homosexual bishops, such as when he refused to get involved in the Bishop Daniel Ryan homopredator bishop case, as can be seen in this letter to Roman Catholic Faithful's Stephen Brady, who had the goods on Ryan, and Bernardin knew it, telling Brady, "He does not feel ... it would be appropriate" to become involved.

As documents begin to surface from deep within the archdiocese's secret files, it appears he was not just a homopredator throughout his career, but also involved in satanic practices, all of which the archdiocese covered up, as well as today's archbishop, Cardinal Blase Cupich.

Our next investigation will look deeply into the cases of the seminarians' claims against Bernardin, as well as other clerics they accused of assaulting them, some of whom are still alive.

As the alleged 1957 rape victim wrote to the U.S. nuncio, "I hesitate to think how many Bernardin has advanced in the Church and in his brotherhood."