The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is facing fresh scrutiny after USCCB President Archbishop Timothy Broglio announced that retired FBI agent James Bogner will oversee clergy sex abuse complaints as the new head of the National Review Board (NRB). Bogner simultaneously chairs the Archdiocese of Omaha’s Ministerial Misconduct Board where he has covered up abuse cases and where his employer, Archbishop George Lucas, himself faces mounting accusations of homosexual abuse and misconduct in lawsuits in Missouri and New York. As media pressure against Lucas grows, faithful Catholics are blasting Bogner’s promotion at the USCCB as an effort on the part of the bishops to skirt accountability and engage in damage control.
The bishops’ new hire is leaving victims questioning why they should trust Church leaders with abuse reports knowing that Bogner appears to have a record of whitewashing incidents of sexual predation. In September 2021, Lisa Roers reported to the Omaha Archdiocese that she was satanically sexually abused by Omaha priest, Father Dennis Hanneman, beginning when she was 9 years old. In an October 9, 2021 letter, Lucas revealed that he forwarded the complaint to Omaha’s internal archdiocesan misconduct review board which was staffed by Bogner. As happens with many internal “review boards” notorious for fraudulently clearing predator priests, Bogner failed to request core details from Roers and another corroborating witness who substantiated her report. These critical omissions enabled Lucas, Bogner, and other Board members to fabricate a conclusion that the accusations against Hanneman were “not credible.” Alarmed by these obvious investigative missteps, a victims’ advocate wrote Bogner, in an August 6, 2024 email stating:
When Lisa Roers reported being abused by Father Dennis Hanneman to the Antelope County Sheriff’s Department and to Archbishop Lucas … why is it that Lucas and archdiocesan officials never inquired about the name or location of the second girl Lisa alleged to have also been satanically abused by Hanneman? As an experienced investigator, do you usually not interview witnesses who were reported to have been present at the site of a crime?
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) would later slam archdiocesan officials for concealing the names of priests accused of abusing minors while ministering in Omaha, even when a number of these clerics were already acknowledged by other dioceses as sex offenders.
Given Bogner’s troubling record and ties to accused predator Archbishop Lucas, victims’ advocates also fear that Bogner may use his influence at the USCCB to get his employer “cleared” of credible allegations just like he “cleared” Hanneman. Unless the bishops can shut down Lucas’ ongoing public sex scandals, continued media scrutiny risks uncovering additional victims or new discoveries of Lucas’ homosexual activities dating back to when he and Cardinal Timothy Dolan raised suspicions over their very close relationship when they lived and studied together in high school and college seminaries for seven years in St. Louis. The victims’ advocate expressed concern that Bogner will prove compromised when addressing abuse complaints on the national level by writing:
Archbishop George Lucas who endorsed your nomination [as head of the NRB] was recently accused in St. Louis of having abused a former seminarian when he was the vice-rector of St. Louis Preparatory Seminary from 1982 to 1987. In response to these allegations, Archbishop Lucas said, “I have never had sexual contact with another person.” I actually spoke with the alleged victim a few years ago … and I found his allegations to be credible … When a former Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI investigated charges that Lucas had anal sex with Father Peter Harman when he was the Bishop of Springfield in Illinois, he reported in sworn affidavits to New York Supreme Court that he found the allegations to be “overwhelmingly steeped in precedent, credible, and supported by documentary evidence.” After viewing the Spotlight report, “The NAC Swamp” and the credible testimony of the witness who claims being paid $300 by Lucas to participate in the orgy, do you really believe Lucas when he misled the public by claiming he “never had sexual contact with another person”?
Bogner’s failure to respond to the August 6, 2024 email seems to validate victims’ concerns that he will leave integrity at the door when he undertakes his new job as head of the NRB.
Bogner’s appointment at the USCCB is not the first time the U.S. bishops hired NRB leaders to obfuscate abuses and cover-ups. When the NRB was created in 2002 to monitor the implementation of the Dallas Charter, its first chairman was former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating. A former high-ranking FBI Agent and federal prosecutor, Keating resigned from the Board after just one year when he realized that the bishops had really hired him to whitewash rather than investigate the sins of accused predators. Comparing the bishops to “La Cosa Nostra” and accusing them of hiding the extent of the sex abuse problem, Keating remarked, “What these people did is criminal … and if I aid and abet I am equally a participant in that crime.”
It became clear in time that the bishops were attempting to use Keating and other lay NRB members to help cover up the large number of closeted homosexuals in the episcopate and the priesthood by arguing that there is no connection between homosexuality and the sex abuse crisis. Familiar with gay organizations like the North American Male/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), Keating knew well that the bishops were lying when they claimed homosexuality was not a key factor driving the surge in clergy abuse cases.
Whitewashing the true scope and causes of the abuse crisis, the bishops paid researchers $1.8 million to produce the highly criticized John Jay Study which claimed that only 4% of priests were found to have abused minors between 1950 and 2002 and that sex abuse was not fueled by homosexual priests. While bishops tried to draw attention away from their own sexual orientation by touting unfounded conclusions in the report, Keating knew that the real percentage and extent of the problem was much larger because bishops grossly underreported abuse cases perpetrated mainly by priests dealing with same-sex attraction. For instance, how could the report accurately determine the percentage of abusers when prelates like then-Archbishop Edwin O’Brien reported just two cases of sex abuse involving minors in the Archdiocese for the Military Services (AMS), when in fact over 150 priests of the AMS faced credible abuse allegations involving hundreds of minors and young adults?
Only one other NRB member, Dr. Paul McHugh, along with psychiatrist Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons and Rev. Dr. D. Paul Sullins, would later debunk bishops’ claims by showing how the statistical evidence in the John Jay report “demonstrates clearly that the major cause of the crisis was the homosexual abuse of males” (even though the Report strangely denied this connection which its data supported).
Then-USCCB President Archbishop Wilton Gregory and other complicit bishops were embarrassed when Keating was quoted in The New York Times as saying, “The Church is home to Christ’s people. It is not a criminal enterprise; it does not condone and cover up criminal activity; it does not follow a code of silence.” Keating told the press that his remarks, which some bishops found offensive, were deadly accurate and that he made “no apology.” Keating truly “went out with a bang” when he wrote in his resignation letter: ”To resist grand jury subpoenas, to suppress the names of offending clerics, to deny, to obfuscate, to explain away; that is the model of a criminal organization, not my church.”
Church leaders have since eliminated NRB members not “up to the task” of burying the real causes of clerical predation and searched for new candidates who would not expose the true number of accused clerical abusers and the connection between homosexuality and abuse. Even today, a host of lay Catholic professionals who serve on Church boards and the NRB continue to rubberstamp the bishops’ cover-ups and allow their names to be affixed to inaccurate reports prepared by complicit bishops.
The bishops are infamous for filling USCCB leadership roles with candidates like Bogner or disgraced former General Secretary Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill who can be counted upon for cover just as the Vatican promotes corrupt bishops who can be trusted to keep the secrets of outgoing prelates. Interestingly, Archbishop Lucas’ successor in the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, Bishop Thomas Paprocki, is also coming under fire as documentary evidence shows that he covered up a Springfield Report he received in 2021 about Lucas’ sexual exploitation of seminarians during his tenure both in the Springfield Diocese and in St. Louis, Missouri. After Paprocki failed to respond to these reports for more than three years, an abused St. Louis Preparatory seminarian had no choice but to name Lucas in a legal suit.
The sex abuse crisis is not “long over” as the bishops’ lackeys like William Donohue would mislead people to believe. Between 2019 and 2023, 12,993 victims reported being abused by Catholic clergy. That averages out to seven victims a day. Pointing out how the Church continues to be plagued by sexual scandals, David Clohessy, a former Executive Director of SNAP, said, “What is disturbing … is the multitude of broken promises by bishops who pledged, time after time, that they had changed their ways, but have essentially not.”
The NRB needs to be staffed with lay men and women who will not allow themselves to be used as pawns by the U.S. bishops. Until this happens, sexual abusers will thrive by keeping “friends in high places” who ensure their sins will never see the light of day.
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 Gomulka on YouTube, follow him on Substack, or email him at msgr.investigations@gmail.com.
Learn more about other graphic homosexual misconduct allegations which Archbishop Lucas is facing in a separate ongoing legal case, please watch the investigative report “SILENCE SHATTERED: Vatican Seminary Leaders Fall Amid Devastating Testimonies