The John-Henry Westen Show - Keeping the faith while investigating clergy sex abuse

00:00:00.060 Welcome to this special episode of the John Henry Weston Show, where I'm very pleased to bring you a guest who really is someone who is fierce against the bad guys, especially the bad guys in the church.

00:00:11.280 He is someone who has worked in one of the most messy areas in the church, looking for, hunting down, if you will, perpetrators of sexual crimes, pedophile priests and the lot.

00:00:24.960 And he's been doing this for many, many years, in fact, decades.

00:00:28.860 We're going to find out how he does this, why he does this, and also how he sustains his Catholic faith while he does it.

00:00:37.380 The greatest thing about Stephen Brady, though, let me tell you, is while he is a fierce defender of the innocent, he's also an awesome Catholic.

00:00:46.460 He's got, despite being such a tough guy who does very tough things, a heart for Christ like very few.

00:00:54.760 And you're going to get to meet him now.

00:00:56.360 This is the John Henry Weston Show.

00:00:58.840 Stay tuned.

00:01:18.000 Stephen Brady, welcome to the program.

00:01:20.000 Thank you very much, John Henry.

00:01:21.540 I appreciate the opportunity to be with you today.

00:01:23.940 Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.

00:01:26.380 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

00:01:30.380 Amen.

00:01:32.280 So, Stephen, you do a lot of what many people might call dirty work.

00:01:37.880 You are really in there getting the details, grabbing the—not only do you have to see horrific things, but you have to dig, and you get a lot of threats.

00:01:48.880 Give us, in a nutshell, what you do and why you do what you do.

00:01:53.260 Well, it all started with my children.

00:01:56.140 They were all in school back in the 90s in the public school system, and the abuse of the sex education program was pornographic.

00:02:04.520 The problem, even though it was a public school, it was Catholic teachers from the local parish who were public school teachers and school board members who were Catholic, extraordinary ministers, and took a role in the church at the local parish.

00:02:18.960 And my children knew this, so they were being introduced to this pornographic material by fellow Catholics that had more education than their father. 0.94

00:02:26.840 And, basically, I went around trying to stop things, and I eventually went to the Catholic laity—I mean, the Catholic clergy within the diocese, asking them, why won't the bishop do anything?

00:02:38.700 Why won't the pastor do anything at the local parish?

00:02:42.740 And, basically, I started getting letters saying, don't you know? 0.88

00:02:46.980 And that's when I started to get information on Bishop Daniel Ryan's predatory homosexual nature.

00:02:51.980 And I couldn't believe—I couldn't believe what I was hearing, and I started to interview some of the clergy that would talk to me.

00:02:59.980 Others hated what I was doing.

00:03:02.020 And, basically, I held a few press conferences when I got some firsthand testimony, and a young lady named Sandra called me from Springfield.

00:03:13.100 She'd seen some of the newspapers, Catholic papers, calling me a liar, didn't know what I was talking about.

00:03:18.040 And this young lady, who was abused herself as a child, not by clergy, by family members and some of the state institutions, and she said she was on the street for many years talking with these street kids, and she knew the ones that had visited Bishop Ryan.

00:03:35.340 She gave me some of their names, and I located them, and I found, eventually, about six witnesses, six teenage boys.

00:03:42.000 And what was so offensive and so troubling to me was, I couldn't let this go when it came to me.

00:03:48.700 I couldn't believe I was being condemned for stopping this, trying to stop it.

00:03:53.460 But I always felt that, well, I'll get the information to the hierarchy, and they'll take care of it.

00:03:58.740 I was still very naive at this time.

00:04:01.300 It basically started over defense of my own children.

00:04:03.960 But anyway, Father Hardin contacted me, Father Malachi Martin, Father Hardin said I could work with him, Father Alfred Koontz, who was murdered in 1998 while helping me, Father Fiore was helping me, many others, Father Minkler.

00:04:18.780 And finally, I began to find out that the hierarchy was the problem.

00:04:23.440 I was ordered by the Vatican to keep my mouth shut.

00:04:26.720 And Cardinal George told me if I went public anymore, I'd be stuck with Ryan. 0.96

00:04:33.420 And in a phone conversation with Cardinal George, I asked him, I said, your eminence, you mean rather than face embarrassment, you will allow this predatory homosexual to stay in power and destroy souls? 1.00

00:04:45.160 And he wouldn't answer me. 0.91

00:04:46.560 He wouldn't talk to me.

00:04:48.400 And so it just grew from there.

00:04:50.880 And it was after we started getting some publicity, the Wanderers started out with the first publication of the stories that I was running.

00:05:00.880 Just the good Lord sent the right people along to help me.

00:05:04.540 And eventually, when the information just started to come in from around the world, asking for our help.

00:05:12.440 And one individual from Ireland called me, it's been just a few years ago, and asked to use my name and our group's name.

00:05:19.140 And I asked him, why?

00:05:20.920 He said, because, Mr. Brady, we know you care, and we know you'll do something, even if it isn't successful.

00:05:29.380 And what I began to realize was people were looking for something to hold on to.

00:05:33.460 And it made my faith stronger, because I saw what damage, lack of faith was doing in the hierarchy within the priesthood.

00:05:42.380 And it was unbelievable.

00:05:44.420 I just started to dig more and more into the Catholic faith as I fought this, looking for answers, basically.

00:05:50.220 And it was one story after another just came out.

00:05:52.760 But hearing these heartbreaking stories from these families, from these victims, from these moms,

00:05:58.900 I visited several Illinois prisons interviewing individuals, a mental institution.

00:06:02.380 I think my one positive aspect is, I don't care what anybody thinks of me.

00:06:09.640 And my wife doesn't care for that attitude too much. 1.00

00:06:12.540 In the very first newspaper article I once told the reporter, I said, I once considered myself one of the world's biggest heathens.

00:06:21.740 I got out of the service, a priest got a hold of me, straightened me out.

00:06:24.960 I wasn't, I just didn't attend mass regular, was a fallen away Catholic.

00:06:29.240 That's been many years ago, in my early 20s.

00:06:32.480 And my wife asked me, well, why did you say you were once the world's biggest heathen?

00:06:37.260 I said, what can they say about me now, honey?

00:06:40.840 What can they say about me?

00:06:42.120 How can they attack me?

00:06:43.680 When I admit, I was no better than the next guy at one point.

00:06:47.420 And it just sort of grew from there.

00:06:49.340 So many people would abandon the faith for this reason.

00:06:56.260 In fact, a lot of people give this as the reason why they left the faith.

00:06:59.540 Yet for you, your faith has remained strong.

00:07:03.820 And you even describe now how it sort of grew your faith.

00:07:09.080 What do you feel is the reason for that?

00:07:12.160 And what would you suggest for people who are turned off the faith by the scandals that are going on?

00:07:17.380 Well, the first thing that happened, I got, Father Hardin contacted me and wanted to work with me, wanted to help me, wanted me to help him under his direction, which I did.

00:07:26.720 And that was a real blessing because I traveled to Detroit and met with Father Hardin at Assumption Grotto.

00:07:32.660 It's one of the few parishes I ever gave a talk in, not the parish, but the gymnasium at the school.

00:07:38.100 And then the late Father Peter Muscari, I would meet with him.

00:07:41.360 He got me in adoration early on.

00:07:43.560 He told me, if you're going to get into this night, Stephen, you got to do it right.

00:07:47.380 And every Sunday morning at 2 in the morning, I had adoration.

00:07:51.300 He had it right before me, which he'd give me direction.

00:07:53.900 And he told me first right off, if you ever start to doubt your faith, Stephen, stop what you're doing.

00:08:00.560 I took that very seriously.

00:08:02.220 My faith actually grew.

00:08:03.800 But Father warned me.

00:08:06.340 He said, the bishops, he said, look at it this way, Stephen. 0.99

00:08:10.720 You're back a rat in the corner. 0.97

00:08:12.060 And he's going to come out fighting. 0.92

00:08:15.600 But he was born and raised in Chicago, although he was incarnated in the Springfield Diocese.

00:08:23.080 And it was just one thing after another.

00:08:26.040 The horrific stories I heard, as I said earlier, just led me back to the faith and how important it was.

00:08:31.940 I have seven children.

00:08:33.620 And one thing that Father Muscari told me that troubled me, he said, if the devil can't get you, Stephen, and your wife, he'll get your children.

00:08:41.380 And that's something we had to watch out for, because I've got a few children that have walked away from the faith.

00:08:48.840 But when you've got these educated college professors and priests telling your family members and your friends, your father doesn't know what he's talking about. 0.99

00:08:58.420 He's crazy. 0.88

00:08:59.820 You know, I've been called all kinds of names. 0.99

00:09:02.000 Everything but a Christian I've been called.

00:09:04.400 And what's so sad is most of the Catholics locally walked away from us.

00:09:09.320 And my wife ran a pizza place business that she had, and the kids worked at.

00:09:14.380 We lost a lot of our business.

00:09:16.820 But thank God for the Protestants. 1.00

00:09:18.540 They made it up.

00:09:19.920 And what's funny is I was asked to join many Protestant denominations.

00:09:25.560 I was asked to help.

00:09:26.640 Several detectives asked me to help investigations of pastors in the Protestant denominations.

00:09:32.200 And I said, no, I'm going to take care of my own faith first.

00:09:35.240 And it just grew from there.

00:09:38.480 One of the things that few people know about you, and I've been privileged to meet with you, is your deep faith.

00:09:47.140 I think it's really astounding.

00:09:48.580 Because the image of Stephen Brady that people who, you know, read you or especially when they give you negative coverage in the media have of you is someone who is really fierce and an attacker.

00:10:03.640 And you do, though, have a gumption about you that you're ready to stand up to a bishop, you're ready to, you know, tell them off.

00:10:14.580 You're pursuing abuser priests, and you know them, and you know the dark side of it.

00:10:20.980 And yet you have a very deep, and I honestly have a very beautiful faith.

00:10:28.200 So that's been, it's been a real joy for me to meet you in person and see that in you.

00:10:33.800 Despite your having to do really the toughest work, one of the things that you were known for already decades ago was the discovery of this horrific site of, Catholic site even, called Sebastian's Angels.

00:10:51.320 And if you could give us a sort of bit of a family-friendly description of what that was and where that went and how you came to it.

00:11:01.920 That was St. Sebastian's Angels, and it was brought to my attention around 1999.

00:11:07.660 Because of the publicity I was getting, people contacted me, and an individual got a hold of me, a religious brother, actually, from California, who was actually a member of St. Sebastian's Angels.

00:11:19.500 And it was a website for homosexual clergy. 0.53

00:11:24.220 And to get in the group, it's a private group, but he got me access.

00:11:29.200 To get into the group, you had to be in the Kennedy Directory.

00:11:32.380 And they were very careful.

00:11:35.400 But when I got in there, he started getting me, they sent me to an address that no one knew.

00:11:41.720 You could stumble across it, but it would be very difficult to do so.

00:11:46.040 But because they were sharing all their emails, I had access to all their emails.

00:11:50.940 And the most educating part of this was the fact of reading emails between homosexual clergy. 0.74

00:11:59.280 And you began to realize the damage that was done because these priests, in one case a bishop, were hearing confessions, were guiding children, so to speak.

00:12:08.860 And what troubled me the most was, there were several things.

00:12:13.760 They described celibacy as not having relations with a woman.

00:12:17.780 They went into graphic detail of what they could do.

00:12:21.140 But since they didn't have sex with a woman, they were celibate.

00:12:24.460 They actually believed this.

00:12:25.720 And one of the priests was involved in a relationship in Georgia, a Georgia priest, Atlanta area.

00:12:33.840 He was involved in a relationship with some man he ran into at a health club.

00:12:39.400 And he asked the group for prayers because his boyfriend had to go back to his wife in another state.

00:12:46.860 And I'm thinking, this is what goes on there, their warped sense of thinking.

00:12:51.940 But the worst thing, and I'm not going to mention any names right here, but one of the individuals ran a not-for-profit group with the Mayan Indian missions.

00:13:01.780 He traveled all over the country.

00:13:03.180 He was a religious order priest.

00:13:05.100 And he sent out a picture of himself and a Mayan Indian boy.

00:13:09.300 And he named the boy.

00:13:10.380 He was like 12 or 14.

00:13:13.000 And he referred to the boy as not my current lover.

00:13:16.500 And I had the emails.

00:13:18.640 I had a picture.

00:13:19.360 What's so interesting is they threatened to turn me, the group threatened, once they found out I was involved, they threatened to turn me over to the FBI.

00:13:27.160 They didn't know I was working with the FBI at the time.

00:13:31.920 And what is so disturbing, not one American cardinal, and I contacted everyone.

00:13:40.700 I told them I've got pictures of naked, naked pictures sent out by clergy, by a bishop.

00:13:45.500 Of course, in these emails, they were also talking about bishops and their boyfriends.

00:13:51.820 And I got a lot of information, gained a lot of insight into what was going on.

00:13:56.140 But not one American cardinal.

00:13:58.640 I said, what do I do with this stuff?

00:14:00.280 I still had a little faith in the hierarchy at this point.

00:14:03.320 It was 1999.

00:14:04.920 And I finally got Cardinal George on the phone.

00:14:08.340 I had his private cell phone number and everything.

00:14:10.420 And I'd cut off ties with him when he refused to do anything about Ryan.

00:14:17.340 And Cardinal George told me, well, I don't want to look at it.

00:14:20.500 It may be an irrecation of sin.

00:14:23.080 I just sort of grasped, gasped for air.

00:14:25.460 I said, how do you go to a YMCA?

00:14:27.760 And these aren't any women involved in this. 1.00

00:14:30.200 How do you hear confessions?

00:14:32.080 How do you solve any problems?

00:14:33.580 And the hierarchy was not interested in this network of priests who clearly didn't believe in the Catholic faith.

00:14:41.320 All across the country, around the world, as a matter of fact, one headed up a website for a major religious order at the Vatican.

00:14:48.340 And I identified quite a few of them.

00:14:50.660 Quite a few of them were foolish enough to use their parish email address and also for their diocesan email address. 0.65

00:14:58.680 And they would put up their photos.

00:14:59.940 But the opening photo of the website was just, I won't go into it here.

00:15:05.140 It was offensive.

00:15:06.420 It was a video look.

00:15:08.420 But so finally we went public.

00:15:11.320 And Mr. Hitchcock, the professor down in St. Louis, did a story on it.

00:15:15.640 Catholic, Father Fessio covered a story on it.

00:15:17.960 And I actually got in touch with Cardinal Ratzinger, who was a prefect of the Congregation for the Faith, I believe, at the time, regarding the bishop involved, Bishop Calkett.

00:15:30.440 And the cardinal called him into his office.

00:15:34.000 And how the cardinal knew I was legitimate, once the cardinal called him into his office, he went back home to South Africa, the bishop,

00:15:41.660 and started emailing the group, not realizing I was still seeing all the emails, about this meeting.

00:15:50.200 He made comments about Cardinal Ratzinger, the rat, he called him.

00:15:54.420 And so I sent Cardinal Ratzinger the text of the emails.

00:15:59.760 And it showed that I did indeed have a direct line, because the bishop did detail the meeting, what went on, made comments about his secretary.

00:16:11.340 And the bishop was eventually removed, but he's still a priest.

00:16:15.820 I don't know what he's doing right now in South Africa.

00:16:18.040 I get calls every now and then.

00:16:19.920 But that was really the most horrific thing.

00:16:22.080 But after that, some of the stories I heard from these victims and their mothers.

00:16:26.560 The one in Kansas City whose mother found the suicide note of her son, who was a 30-year-old professor.

00:16:34.540 And she read the suicide note and realized what the family friend, parish priest, had done to him.

00:16:40.500 And it's stuff like that that really moves you, gives me more determination.

00:16:44.500 Because as a father of seven children, you know, your children are everything.

00:16:48.700 I think if you're natural, if anything touches you, I've helped in the birth of seven children.

00:16:55.700 And that's why I never had to be taught to be pro-life.

00:17:00.300 I couldn't imagine anything else.

00:17:02.300 I couldn't imagine the day would come when a mother would demand the right to kill her unborn child. 1.00

00:17:07.720 Or the fact that a bishop would sit down and wine and dine some pro-abortion politician that participated and promoted the murder of millions of children.

00:17:18.380 And it's just one thing after another from there.

00:17:22.980 These priests, now, have you followed up with any of them?

00:17:26.600 Were they eventually brought to justice or anything like that?

00:17:30.600 Or is this, it just sort of went away and they are still out there?

00:17:34.060 No, there's quite a few that were dealt with.

00:17:36.500 But only because of the public exposure.

00:17:40.120 In 2002, I went down to Dallas where they had the conference on the Charter for the Protection of Children, which was a joke.

00:17:48.720 Because they're not following any of their own rules.

00:17:51.500 But while I was down there, I had the pleasure of meeting Tom Palkin, who was a Reagan White House attorney.

00:17:57.080 And he helped me.

00:17:58.480 I did a CNN show actually debating a lesbian.

00:18:02.080 And the CNN got mad at me because I wasn't interruptive or brutal enough.

00:18:06.080 I was still being kind of a lady at the time.

00:18:08.900 And I did several radio shows.

00:18:13.180 And some of the priests down there were dealt with.

00:18:16.480 But one of them, I'll just mention his first name, Cliff.

00:18:19.680 When this was going on, he explained to the bishop and me that, oh, he was just there to minister.

00:18:26.540 He wasn't doing anything.

00:18:27.900 There was nothing going on.

00:18:29.180 And what's ironic is after this all transpired, a few years later, I found out that Father Cliff had married a priest from the Belleville Diocese.

00:18:38.980 And in his wedding ceremony, in some of the material, he was explaining when he met this priest and when they became involved.

00:18:46.840 He met him a year before I exposed him on St. Sebastian's Angels by his own notes and connotations.

00:18:53.180 So he was actually telling me he never did anything like this.

00:18:56.540 He was actually involved with a priest he eventually married.

00:19:00.260 But it was so troubling because most bishops didn't care.

00:19:05.460 They didn't want anything to do with it.

00:19:07.220 The individual, Father John, I won't lose his last name, he was eventually taken care of.

00:19:13.200 He set up the website when they caught him in a hot tub nude with a young man, a young boy.

00:19:21.660 And that photograph came up.

00:19:25.100 But a lot of people came to my aid to help people that, unfortunately, it was mostly women. 0.95

00:19:31.020 I said, give me 10 good men in the diocese and we'll bring it back to where it should be.

00:19:36.100 It was mostly women, and God bless them. 1.00

00:19:39.320 I had three ladies that volunteered to help in the office. 1.00

00:19:44.180 But that was the most horrific.

00:19:46.480 But the story of Jenny, who was a 12-year-old girl picked up at a bus station by a priest from the Springfield Diocese years ago.

00:19:55.660 Jenny was assaulted by a group of boys at the age of 12.

00:19:59.880 And she ran away from home.

00:20:01.360 Her mother was in a mental institution.

00:20:03.700 Her father was nowhere around.

00:20:04.960 And a priest picked her up at the bus station and took her home with his niece.

00:20:10.640 And the story she did, the story she told me, the things that he did to her.

00:20:19.140 And later in life, I asked her, because I met with her several times.

00:20:24.660 She's a grown adult now.

00:20:27.300 He fathered two children with the lady.

00:20:29.560 And the doctor that he sent her to when he impregnated her, I found out after he had killed himself, was my wife's OBGYN.

00:20:40.700 Once I asked Jenny, and this is what really killed me.

00:20:43.420 This is one of two things that really set me off.

00:20:46.380 I said, Jenny, why did you stay with him?

00:20:48.580 Why did you not scream out?

00:20:49.800 He said, Mr. Brady.

00:20:52.320 She said, I thought that's what love was.

00:20:54.680 And you've got to realize, this is a girl whose mother was in a mental institution. 0.96

00:20:59.460 She was raped as a child. 0.71

00:21:01.560 She didn't know anything. 0.91

00:21:02.700 And this was a Catholic priest, someone that was supposed to help her.

00:21:07.020 But the other most disturbing incident that really fired me up was early on, I met Frank Bergen.

00:21:12.360 His name has been very public.

00:21:13.860 Frank has AIDS.

00:21:14.720 He's older now.

00:21:15.420 I met him in an Illinois prison where I went to see him because I was told by Sandra that he was one of the boys visiting Bishop Ryan.

00:21:23.560 And Frank was in his early 30s at the time.

00:21:25.800 And I looked at him, and I was in the prison interviewing him.

00:21:28.520 And it almost brought me to tears.

00:21:30.780 He's telling me a story.

00:21:32.040 He was adopted out of St. Louis into a Springfield home.

00:21:35.520 Had some abuse issues, not in the home, but there when he was there.

00:21:39.520 And he ran away from home to get away from it.

00:21:42.860 And he said he always loved his adoptive mother.

00:21:44.960 And he said, Mr. Brady, at 15 years old, I ran away from home for the last time.

00:21:51.340 I prayed my mother would come get me one more time. 0.93

00:21:54.420 And she never came.

00:21:56.240 You know, it's stuff like that that just breaks your heart.

00:21:59.140 And you realize the damage being done by the clergy.

00:22:03.060 But it's Timothy Hugo, the one that eventually brought down Bishop Ryan.

00:22:07.640 Ryan had retired.

00:22:09.940 They did a somewhat trumped-up investigation that really didn't even mention the word homosexuality.

00:22:14.960 And Timothy had called the diocese to get some help and ended up in a phone conversation with Bishop Ryan.

00:22:22.740 Ended up in a relationship with him.

00:22:25.100 And there was a domestic disturbance call at Bishop's house, his house he was living in after he stepped down and retired Bishop Ryan.

00:22:32.340 And Timothy had caught the bishop with his boyfriend.

00:22:37.400 And with Timothy's boyfriend.

00:22:38.960 And there was a fight, a little scuffle.

00:22:41.400 I got the police report, interviewed the neighbors.

00:22:44.200 But it's when they finally moved Bishop Ryan out of the area.

00:22:46.820 And what troubled me the most was not one bishop, not one cardinal, not one priest in the chancery loved Bishop Ryan enough to tell him the truth, to stop him what he's doing.

00:23:00.600 And that sort of told me it brought back the benedicting that said it's not an act of charity to allow one's neighbor to run headlong into hell.

00:23:08.880 No one knew what Catholic love was.

00:23:11.380 No one cared enough for any of these priests or bishops to stop him.

00:23:15.200 Look what we have today.

00:23:17.340 The enablers are the evil ones.

00:23:19.500 Who has paid a price for protecting McCarrick?

00:23:21.880 Nobody.

00:23:23.080 Nobody.

00:23:24.280 No one.

00:23:25.080 Not one bishop is made to pay the price.

00:23:27.400 What's equally troubling is when I started to dig a little deeper, I found a lot of corporations, legally formed corporations, hidden corporations set up by some of the bishops.

00:23:39.420 Not every bishop, but a few bishops were involved.

00:23:42.160 McCarrick, Wuerl, Cupich, Lucas, and a few others.

00:23:46.620 And they bought a $9 million building in Omaha.

00:23:49.760 I had a PI helping me with a lot of public record searches, and it was sort of a private insurance corporation, but not every bishop was involved.

00:24:00.960 And they had this $9 million building, which I hope to go visit soon, and it was a rather large established building in Omaha.

00:24:08.780 And they had a lot of affiliated corporations around the country.

00:24:12.960 But what's so disturbing is we have no idea how much money each diocese throws into these corporations.

00:24:20.260 And they're legally formed corporations.

00:24:22.440 The thing is they claim to be churches, although I don't think they own a church building.

00:24:27.260 I can find no legal connection to any diocese.

00:24:30.780 There may be, except the fact that some of the bishops sit on the board of directors.

00:24:34.240 And they're spending billions of dollars each year.

00:24:38.740 They've got this $9 million building.

00:24:41.660 I have no idea where the money comes from, how much comes in from each diocese.

00:24:47.860 And the parishioners don't either.

00:24:49.240 The people that, the widows might, the people that donate this money have no idea where it's coming from.

00:24:54.840 That's why RCF right now, the step we're doing, we're digging into the finances,

00:24:59.700 because everyone knows about the abuse within the Catholic Church.

00:25:04.960 Everyone knows the faith is not being taught.

00:25:07.560 But the key now is, I think, I'm working with federal and state and local law enforcement to some degree.

00:25:15.880 And a lot of them are reluctant to take on the Catholic hierarchy.

00:25:18.960 But I found situations with illegal gambling halls, one bishop's bookie, other information that's so disturbing.

00:25:29.460 So we're trying to find out how the money's going, where it's going.

00:25:33.280 And I think one individual I hope to talk to sometime is Archbishop Viganot.

00:25:41.220 He was apostolic delegate.

00:25:43.520 And he's come out.

00:25:44.740 He said he's got a conscience now.

00:25:46.020 And I have no reason to doubt that.

00:25:47.380 But the key is, in my mind, any bishop who claims to be a good bishop or a good person,

00:25:55.440 unless he tells us how the inner workings, how it goes on behind the scenes,

00:26:00.180 how the money's moved around, offshore accounts, if there is any, so on and so forth,

00:26:05.500 that's what is needed to straighten things out within the Catholic hierarchy.

00:26:09.680 Because clearly, you can see from the lack of love within the hierarchy. 0.66

00:26:13.440 And by that, I mean, if you can promote homosexuals getting communion, you can't love them. 1.00

00:26:20.700 You can't believe in hell. 0.99

00:26:22.180 You can't believe they're going to get sent there.

00:26:24.160 If you allow a bishop to go on doing these things and you can't straighten him out,

00:26:28.620 you can't publicly denounce what he's doing.

00:26:31.940 It's such a lack of love and the real true meaning of the word love within the Catholic faith. 0.77

00:26:36.020 So I think we need to go after the money.

00:26:38.760 We need to find out how it's moved around, because the faithful Catholic deserve that, at the very least. 0.98

00:26:44.260 Because I think it's the only way.

00:26:46.480 Actually, I pray for a RICO lawsuit, God willing, if that should show up.

00:26:50.240 Because it's like these corporations I found.

00:26:53.280 They were operating under the name of a Catholic church.

00:26:56.780 The church.

00:26:57.360 They got the tax-exempt status, the same standing as the Catholic church, the hierarchy.

00:27:04.380 They don't have to report any income.

00:27:06.760 They don't have to show how much money they're paying out.

00:27:09.560 And it's just like the Conference of Bishops.

00:27:11.620 They own a $60 million building in Washington, D.C.

00:27:15.680 Every diocese has millions, if not billions of dollars in property.

00:27:19.480 Why did the group of bishops need to buy a $9 million building in Omaha, Nebraska?

00:27:25.760 So there's a lot of questions that need to be answered, and that's what we're working on right now.

00:27:30.980 And I have a lot of help, unfortunately, from people.

00:27:33.340 How can people help you?

00:27:34.560 How can people find out?

00:27:36.400 Your organization is called Roman Catholic Faithful.

00:27:38.900 It's been around for a long, long time.

00:27:42.640 And how can people help out?

00:27:44.900 How can they get in touch with you?

00:27:46.160 Well, we've got a website, rcf.org, www.rcf.org.

00:27:52.220 And they could donate through PayPal.

00:27:53.920 Because right now, we're a small organization.

00:27:55.880 We have no payroll.

00:27:57.160 I don't receive a paycheck.

00:27:58.680 We have nobody on the payroll.

00:28:00.160 It's strictly volunteer.

00:28:01.580 I work off a laptop a lot of times out of my truck or on the road somewhere.

00:28:06.560 And a lot of this is done, you know, on the fly.

00:28:10.060 Most of the money we get is spent on travel or investigations.

00:28:13.720 But we need, we're being sued right now by one priest.

00:28:17.160 I can't go into the detail.

00:28:19.080 Out in California, it's the first time in 26 years, the first one that's ever followed through with a lawsuit.

00:28:24.840 My attorney claims, Paul Jones, it's an unjust lawsuit, and he'll take care of it.

00:28:29.180 But it's costly.

00:28:29.960 And so we're fighting that right now.

00:28:33.560 So we can use some financial contributions to help us continue to fight the lawsuit, and hopefully we'll counter-sue and get all our money back.

00:28:41.220 But mainly to keep funding the investigations we're trying to do.

00:28:45.180 Because tracking the money, tracking the bishops, and I'm not accusing any individual bishop.

00:28:50.860 I'm just saying there's billions of dollars being given to lawyers.

00:28:54.360 There's billions of dollars being paid out in abuse funds.

00:28:57.840 And the faith isn't being taught.

00:28:59.940 So the faithful have a right to know where this money is going.

00:29:03.740 We still need to, we still need, as you folks do, expose, give people the news.

00:29:09.000 Let them know what's going on.

00:29:10.780 But to ever end this crisis, I do believe we need to go after the money, and we need to break up the criminal enterprise, if you want to call it that,

00:29:21.880 that may be underlying some of this nonsense that's going on within the hierarchy.

00:29:26.160 And if you just look at the news reports, the Vatican Bank scandals, that's public record.

00:29:32.080 One gentleman hanging from a bridge in Italy years ago.

00:29:34.980 Billions of dollars with no accountability.

00:29:37.240 So that's where the problem comes in.

00:29:38.880 And that's what we have to focus on, I do believe.

00:29:41.160 Stephen Brady, in closing, just let me say I want to thank you for what you're doing for the church.

00:29:46.320 I know the heart with which you do it.

00:29:47.920 I also want to say a thank you to your family, to your wife especially, who has allowed you to do this great work for the church, which is, it is, it's totally disregarded and hated.

00:29:59.940 You have, you've been hated by many, many, and then you've watched them not pay attention when you've tried to give them the most obvious evidence that ever was.

00:30:11.460 But God bless you for what you've done for the church.

00:30:14.360 Stay strong.

00:30:15.300 And we're praying for you.

00:30:16.840 Thank you very, very much, John.

00:30:19.140 Thank you very much.

00:30:20.440 God bless you.

00:30:21.200 And God bless all of you.

00:30:22.360 We'll see you next time.

00:30:23.500 One extra thing that you can do, if you're interested in helping Stephen Brady and Roman Catholic Faithful do this really hard grunt work for the faith, please donate to our LifeFunder set up for Roman Catholic Faithful.

00:30:40.480 That's LifeFunder, L-I-F-E-F-U-N-D-E-R.com.

00:30:44.100 Go there and please support Stephen in the great work he's doing, the very hard work he's doing for the church.

00:30:50.800 Hi, this is John Henry Weston, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of LifeSite News.

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The John-Henry Westen Show - March 26, 2021

Keeping the faith while investigating clergy sex abuse

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