This is the article that appeared in the June 2025 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects
the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

What happens when an organization achieves its goal? It either folds or it develops a new one. The March of Dimes was founded to cure polio, and when the Salk vaccine proved effective, those who worked there could have declared victory and packed up their bags and left. But they didn’t. Instead, they chose a new mission: combating birth defects and infant mortality.

When it comes to civil rights organizations, this situation is much trickier.

Prejudice and discrimination exist in many quarters of America. People are still treated unfairly on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, sex, age, disability, and the like, but in almost every instance there has been much progress. A related, though separate, issue is the perception of progress. It is entirely possible for people of one demographic group or another to feel they are still treated unfairly when objective measures prove otherwise.

The progress made by minorities and women—in every aspect of society—is undeniably impressive. So much so that organizations founded to protect their civil rights have often experienced mission creep. Flush with money, they find themselves treading into new territories, seeking to address the latest civil rights issue. It helps enormously when big bucks are involved.

A case in point is the discovery of LGBT rights by organizations that were never founded—even remotely—to deal with this issue. But the fact that they are spending so much more time addressing the gay and transgender agenda is a sign that they have made tremendous progress in achieving their original goal. But they will never admit it. Victim advocates need victims.

For a majority of these groups, their shift to LGBT issues began in the late 2000s and early 2010s. At this point, the issue of gay rights, particularly marriage equality, was beginning to become a major civil rights issue. Soon the issue of transgender rights took center stage.

The following organizations have drifted into the LGBT arena. They are listed chronological in terms of when they embraced gay and transgender rights.

NAACP Legal Defense Fund

—Year founded: 1940

—Original mission: To secure laws that advance racial equality.

—First mention of LGBT advocacy: 1990s.

—Actions taken: Starting in 1996, it filed amicus briefs in cases that affected the rights of lesbians and gay men. It later fought for marriage equality.

Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

—Year founded: 1950

 —Original mission: The Conference’s original mission was “grounded in commitment to social justice and the firm conviction that the struggle for civil rights would be won not by one group, but through coalition.” It focused mostly on civil rights for African Americans.

—First mention of LGBT advocacy: 2003

—Actions taken: Its first foray defending LGBT rights came in 2003 when it applauded the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which offered new rights for gays and lesbians.

NAACP

—Year founded: 1909

—Original mission: To fight for racial equality.

—First mention of LGBT advocacy: 2008

—Actions taken: In 2008 the NAACP’s California state chapter opposed the state’s Proposition 8. It later defended marriage equality.

National Urban League

—Year founded: 1910

—Original mission: To fight for racial equality.

—First mention of LGBT advocacy: 2009

 —Actions taken: Its first goal was to fight for the Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

ADL

—Year founded: 1913

—Original mission: To combat antisemitism.

—First mention of LGBT advocacy: 2010

 —Actions taken: It filed an amicus brief in a marriage equality case.

National Women’s Law Center

—Year founded: 1972

—Original mission: To fight for the rights of women.

—First mention of LGBT advocacy: 2012

 —Actions taken: In October 2012, it released a fact sheet on Title IX protections for LGBT and gender non-conforming students. It later became more active in combating discrimination. The Ruth Bader Ginsburg Center for Liberty at the

ACLU

—Year founded: In 1972, Ruth Bader Ginsburg founded the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU. In 2010, the Center for Liberty, which included the Women’s Rights Project, was established. In 2020, the Center was renamed the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Center for Liberty.

 —Original mission: To fight for women’s rights, principally abortion rights. It has since taken up the cause of gay and transgender people.

—First mention of LGBT advocacy: 2015

—Actions taken: To fight for passage of the Equality Act.

It is one thing for sister organizations to form coalitions; it is quite another when they engage in mission creep. But when there isn’t enough work for employees to do, they must find new avenues to explore. Add to this the lure of foundation money, and the temptation is irresistible.

One more thing. Notice none of these left-wing civil rights organizations ever experience mission creep by taking up the cause of anti-Catholicism. That is not a civil rights issue that exercises them.

Bill Donohue

July 15, 2025

The Catholic League welcomes the announcement that the IRS has altered its policy on non-profit organizations and their participation in political campaigns. We know from our own experience that the 1954 stricture, known as the Johnson Amendment, prohibiting 501 (c) (3) organizations from campaign activity, is both rife for mischief and impractical. But the changes will not have any substantial impact on the way we have been operating for decades.

On July 7, the National Religious Broadcasters, an association of Christian communications, and the IRS reached a settlement regarding their dispute over the IRS’s authority to stifle the political speech of religious non-profits.

“When a house of worship in good faith speaks to its congregation, through its customary channels of communication on matters of faith in connection with religious services, concerning electoral politics viewed through the lens of religious faith, it neither ‘participate(s)’ nor ‘intervenes’ in a ‘political campaign,’ within the ordinary meaning of those words.”

The motion said “this interpretation of the Johnson Amendment is in keeping with the IRS’s treatment of the Johnson Amendment in practice.”

That conclusion is way too generous. The IRS did in fact break new ground with its settlement agreement. Here’s the evidence.

Just weeks after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, I was notified by the IRS that the Catholic League was under investigation for violating the IRS Code on political activities as it relates to 501 (c) (3) organizations. What the IRS did not realize is that I knew who triggered the investigation: Catholics United (now defunct), a George Soros-funded phony Catholic organization. We know it was a dummy Catholic group because of the 2016 Wikileaks files on John Podesta (former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton and chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign). He admitted to doing this.

When I received the November 24, 2008 IRS letter notifying me of a probe, I recognized how strikingly similar it was to a leaked copy of the Catholics United complaint. Just before I was scheduled to go on CNN on October 23 (three days after I wrote a news release, “George Soros Funds Catholic Left”), a CNN staffer leaked the complaint to me. She did so because the head of Catholics United, Chris Korzen, tried to stop me from being interviewed—he suggested that one of his allies take my place, claiming I was not “an authentic Catholic commentator.” CNN knew better and I went on TV that night.

The “evidence” against me was nothing more than news releases and reports that I had written during the presidential campaign on various issues. In other words, the IRS would not have taken action against the Catholic League if it were faithful to the rules that it now claims were always operative. In short, the new wording is welcome precisely because it alters its long-standing policy on religious non-profits.

What we went through—it lasted for about a year and a half before we were given a slap on the wrist—proves what I said about the IRS rule being rife for mischief: It allowed the Soros-funded “Catholic” group to persuade the IRS to start its investigation.

Another example of the mischief that the initial rule entailed was the disparate treatment given to African American churches. Not a campaign season goes by without political candidates speaking at black churches. In some cases, they have been endorsed by pastors; there are instances when collections have been taken up for them. If this happened at a Catholic church, the whole world would know about it.

I also said this stricture was impractical. What made it impractical was the enforcement mechanism.

How can a religious non-profit like the Catholic League be expected to combat anti-Catholicism, and fight for religious liberty, without addressing political figures who are responsible for these matters? We have a First Amendment right to freedom of religion and freedom of speech, so any encroachment on those rights is unconstitutional.

The IRS concluded that although the Catholic League had “intervened in a political campaign,” it was “unintentional, isolated, non-egregious and non-recurring,” and therefore our tax exempt status remained in tact. I told the IRS agent who contacted me that they were twice wrong: (a) we did not intervene in a political campaign and (b) what we did was intentional. Therefore, I said, we were not going to change course.

It is now indisputable: the Catholic League did not change—the IRS did.

We will continue to address policy issues that arise during a political campaign that are of interest to our mission. While we have no plans to endorse candidates for public office, we will not hesitate to call out candidates who trespass on religious liberty. Quite frankly, once either the Republicans or the Democrats think they own you, they are free to throw you to the curb. We are happily independent.

So while we will not substantially change our stance, we are glad to know that we won’t have the IRS looking over our shoulder for simply doing our job.

Bill Donohue

July 14, 2025

We’ve all dealt with scolds, highly judgmental finger-pointing people who are quick to call us out for some alleged moral outrage. They are annoying, to put it mildly. The corrective, however, is not to become the polar opposite, which is to be non-judgmental about practically everything. The extremes, as usual, are no good.

It is not the scolds who are the big problem these days; it’s the non-judgmental types. Their smugness is sickening—they like to lord over us as the high priests of tolerance and open-mindedness. More important, there are times when to withhold judgment is not only not virtuous, it is morally offensive. To cite one example: If we can’t summon the moral courage to unequivocally denounce genocide, then we need to reset our moral compass.

Artificial intelligence tells us that “Being non-judgmental fosters understanding and improves relationships.” To be sure, this is true in some cases. But if the issue is incest, then fostering an understanding  may actually impede our ability to condemn. More to the point, it is absurd to think that being non-judgmental about mother-son sexual relationships is virtuous.

Other internet sites imply that making judgments suggests a character disorder. “Why do you feel the need to judge? It’s time for some introspection. You need to be honest with yourself and unwrap why you feel the need to judge other people.”

So when parents tell their children it’s time to retire their phone, or turn off the TV, and start doing their homework, they need to look in the mirror and ask themselves why they feel the need to judge? The truth is parents who are not judgmental about such things are delinquent in their duties. And by the way, is not the decision not to judge a judgment call?

In some Catholic quarters, it is fashionable to cite Pope Francis as a beacon of non-judgmentalism. After all, they say, it was he who famously said about homosexuality, “Who am I to judge?”

Wrong. He never said that about homosexuality. Homosexuality is  conduct, a behavior proscribed by the Bible and the Catholic Catechism, and the pope never said it wasn’t sinful. But being a homosexual is morally neutral—it is no more sinful than being a heterosexual.

Pope Francis was referring to the status of someone who is a homosexual, and in this particular case it was about a priest who had been accused, but not found guilty, of a sexual offense. To his credit, the pope chose his words very carefully. What he said before, and after, those five words, “Who am I to judge?”, matters greatly.

“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge him?” (My italics.) The qualifiers, and the object of his remark, provide a very different picture than the one falsely promoted by “non-judgmental” savants.

When non-judgmentalism becomes a crusade, it carries the seeds of moral relativism, one of the most destructive, indeed lethal, ideas in history.

In his classic book, Modern Times, Paul Johnson, the great English Catholic historian, argued that the astounding violence and cultural corruption that marked the twentieth century was a function of moral relativism, the notion that there are no moral absolutes, just opinions. It was after World War I, he said, that moral relativism triumphed. Notions of right and wrong were no longer seen as a cultural expression, grounded in our Judeo-Christian heritage. No, they were merely a matter of whim.

Hitler said, “There is no such thing as truth, either in the moral or in the scientific sense.” He made good on his ethics. He killed with abandon, never flinching from his convictions. In this regard, he was following the wisdom of Nietzsche, who opined, “There are no facts, only interpretations.” Once truth and facts are seen as mere opinions, it allows some to think that putting Jews into ovens is the right thing to do. After all, “Who are we to judge”?

The Institute for Historical Review (IHR) is a contemporary example of this view. It spends most of its time trying to belittle, if not deny, the Holocaust. It maintains that this is not an accurate account, but anyone who has read its work knows better. “The IHR does not ‘deny’ the Holocaust. Indeed, the IHR as such has no ‘position’ on any specific event or chapter of history, except to promote greater awareness and understanding, and to encourage more objective investigation.”

Why lie? Why the need to put the word deny in quotes, as if it were debatable? Similarly, any organization that takes no position on the Holocaust means it would not object if another Hitler emerged with his Final Solution plans.

The intentional killing of millions of innocent people is morally abhorrent. If that is being judgmental, so be it. There are times when being non-judgmental makes sense, but as a universal rule it is morally debased. Even deadly.

Bill Donohue

July 11, 2025

Anyone who has been following the ordeal of Father Gordon MacRae, the falsely accused priest who has been imprisoned since 1994, is aware of the injustice he has had to endure. One of the persons who has contributed to this injustice is U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante.

He is back in the news for halting President Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship. He has given the president one week to appeal his decision.

To understand why the Catholic League believes this judge is morally delinquent, read the account by Detective Ryan MacDonald on how Laplante put the screws to Father MacRae.

Bill Donohue

July 10, 2025

Black Lives Matter Day is July 13. BLM was founded in 2013 after the death of Trayvon Martin but did not become a national force until 2020. Today it is nothing but a shell of an organization. It not only ripped off corporate donors, its legacy is one of blood.

In July 2020, Patrisse Cullors became BLM’s executive director. Less than a year later she resigned after it was reported that she “used her position as the charity’s leader to funnel business to an art company led by the father of her only child.” Before she left in May 2021, she announced that BLM had raised over $90 million. CharityWatch subsequently said BLM is “a giant ghost ship full of treasure drifting in the night with no captain, no discernible crew, and no clear direction.”

It was such a mess that ten states had to close its chapters once it was revealed that BLM was not in compliance with state registration laws. In September 2022, one of its board members, Shalomyah Bowers, and his consulting firm, was accused of stealing more than $10 million in donations from the BLM Global Foundation, using it as its own “piggy bank.”

Bad as this is, nothing is worse than the violence that BLM protesters  engaged in, and the way it exploited black-police encounters. It planted the seed in the minds of millions of Americans that the cops are the enemy of black people, thus aggravating racial relations.

The late David Horowitz closely tracked the damage that BLM had done. “All the outrage against police racism, and all the mayhem fueled by that outrage, was based on no evidence whatsoever. It was based on a lie.” He concluded that the lie “inspired over 600 attacks on 220 American cities.”

To read our report on BLM’s lies and their consequences, click here.

Bill Donohue

July 8, 2025

Catholic dissidents are a motley crew. They include ex-Catholics, Catholics in name only, and some who attend Mass. They are lay men and women, nuns and priests; more than a few are ex-nuns and ex-priests. What they have in common is anger: they are very angry at the Catholic Church. What do they want? They want to gut its moral theology and Protestantize it.

Practicing Catholics do not fund Catholic dissident organizations, so where do they get their cash? From elite foundations bent on undermining Catholicism. There are many of them, but the number-one contributor to these “organizations” (they are more like letterheads with an email address and a website) is the Arcus Foundation.

Arcus funds We Are Church, DignityUSA, New Ways Ministry, Catholics for Choice and the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual. All reject the Church’s teachings on marriage, the family, sexuality and ordination, yet claim to be Catholic.

Jon Stryker created the Arcus Foundation in 2000 to focus on queer causes and the preservation of the great apes. We are not sure how well he has done on the latter goal, but we are certain that he has succeeded in funding anti-Catholicism. A homosexual billionaire, in 2023 he gave a total of more than $42 million in grants and operating expenses to various organizations, some of which are dissident Catholic groups.

We Are Church is an umbrella group of ex-Catholics and Catholic malcontents. It is a member of the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, a pro-homosexual outfit. Its leaders have tried very hard to mobilize everyday Catholics to join their efforts to radically change the Church from top to bottom. They have failed repeatedly, but they still try to tear it apart.

New Ways Ministry was founded in 1977 by Father Robert Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick. Their goal is to normalize homosexuality and to get the Church to change its teachings on sodomy. For decades this outfit has been roundly condemned by cardinals and bishops in Rome and the U.S., but in 2021 Pope Francis spoke positively of Gramick. Indeed, he warmly embraced her.

DignityUSA is another pro-homosexual entity. At one time its New York chaplain was Father Paul Shanley, the Boston child rapist who was thrown out of the priesthood after many clerics covered up for him.

Catholics for Choice is a pro-abortion and anti-Catholic letterhead. Frances Kissling, an ex-nun, succeeded in putting it on the map decades ago. The media love them, and no elite donor has been a steadier supporter of its policies more than the Ford Foundation. The Ford Foundation is so ideologically corrupt that Henry Ford II quit in protest in the 1970s.

Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER) wants a  woman to be pope, provided it is a woman who rejects the teachings of the Church on sexuality; it will settle for women priests right now.

Other dissident groups that are funded by the establishment include the National Coalition of American Nuns—it is openly pro-abortion—the Women’s Ordination Conference and NETWORK; the latter was run for many years by Sister Simone—Nuns-on-the-Bus—Campbell (the Democratic operative thinks abortion should be legal).

Arcus and the Ford Foundation are not alone in keeping these rogue groups alive. As expected, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations are donors to these anti-Catholic causes, as are the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation (Warren is a big abortion fan), the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Huber Foundation.

We know of no organized effort to effectively assault the beliefs and practices of Jews, Muslims or Protestants. Just Catholics.

So while conservatives are rightly happy that there are some needed cultural shifts going on, they would be foolish to think that the enemies of Christianity, especially Catholicism, will go quietly into the night. Termites have a way of hanging around.

Michael P. McDonald

July 7, 2025

Otto von Bismarck once commented that “Laws are like sausages. It is best not to see them being made.” This maxim is even more applicable for large-scale bills that have come to dominate the political landscape of Washington in recent years. After all, in all of these bills, there will be things you love, there will be things you can live with, and there will be things you hate. It all really comes down to what you choose to emphasize.

With President Trump’s signature spending bill, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” becoming law, the talking heads have already begun spewing their narrative about this legislation. While we will leave it to the chattering class to cheer and jeer at this bill that Trump has rightfully touted as critical in unleashing America’s potential, there is a major component of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that is of keen interest to the Catholic League: namely, this legislation is the single greatest victory for school choice on the national level.

The bill provides a full tax credit for Americans who donate to third-party scholarship granting organizations. These generous people will be eligible to take off $1,700 from their taxes each year. In turn, these donations will be used as scholarships that families can put towards paying for tuition or other educational expenses.

For the first time in American history, the federal government is providing a real alternative to families plagued by failing public schools that refuse to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic so that they can indoctrinate young minds turning them into woke activists.

Of course, as with every other aspect of these massive spending packages, the school choice provision was subjected to the usual procedural measures and horse trading that impacted its final shape. While the Senate Parliamentarian watered-down the more robust version that allowed for more funding for this critical measure, a bigger concern was the inclusion of an opt-out clause allowing blue states, who need alternatives the most, the option of not participating in the scholarship programs.

While this will lessen the impact of this program, it is a step in the right direction and illustrates that there is always more to do on the critical issue of school choice. For our part, the Catholic League will continue to lead in this critical fight.

As our longtime members will know, when Fr. Virgil C. Blum founded the Catholic League in 1973, school choice was a primary concern of his. After all, a high quality Catholic education is critical to the formation of the next generation of Catholics. It will lead to more people deeply committed to the Church who will spend the rest of their lives ensuring our faith is vigorously represented in the public square.

And the “One Big Beautiful Bill” will bolster Catholic schools across America. This will help struggling families access high quality Catholic education, help in forming faithful Catholics for generations to come, and ensure Catholics have a strong presence in the public square. For all of these reasons, we are bullish about this key provision in Trump’s signature bill.

It truly is one big beautiful win for school choice.

Bill Donohue

July 3, 2025

Fourth of July festivities are loved by most Americans, and this year is no different. There are exceptions, of course, the most noticeable being celebrities, many of whom are more at home condemning America than celebrating it. Too many of them have a hard time flexing their patriotic muscles.

The Hollywood elite are often seen supporting radical anti-American conferences and demonstrations. Today, they are quick to say they don’t hate America, just its president. The distinction is valid, but it still raises serious questions about the extent of their patriotism. For example, those who despised Biden were rarely, if ever, seen cheering, or participating in, events where the American flag was burned. The same is not true of the anti-Trump crowd.

When hatred of the president becomes so extreme that its proponents suggest, or flatly support, violence, they are a threat to our country.

Broadway star Patti LuPone is so angry at Trump that she recently said she wanted to blow up the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Who can forget Kathy Griffin holding a bloody, decapitated Trump head? Marilyn Manson did something similar when he released a video that showed a Trump-like figure decapitated. Mickey Rourke said he would “love 30 seconds in a room” with Trump, and also expressed an interest in smashing him with a baseball bat.

Larry Wilmore said, “I don’t want to give him [Trump] any more oxygen. That’s not a euphemism, by the way. I mean it literally.” Rosie O’Donnell, who has fled the country, opined that it would be great to have a game called, “Push Trump Off a Cliff Again.” Madonna hated Trump so much she told a huge anti-Trump crowd that she had “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.”

If the celebrities are not preaching violence, they are sounding the alarm over Trump tearing the country apart.

During the presidential campaign last year, Robert De Niro told the press that Trump “wants to destroy” the world. Stephen King warned how fragile democracy is, saying, “LOVELY TO LOOK AT. DELIGHTFUL TO HOLD, BUT ONCE YOU BREAK IT, THEN IT’S SOLD.”

Mia Farrow, another victim of Trump Derangement Syndrome, recently proclaimed, “If we have 6 months of democracy left i’ll [sic] be surprised. I’m guessing 3-4 months.”

I marked my calendar the day she said that. It was March 4. Well, four months have gone by and we are on the eve of July 4th. If she thinks democracy has crashed, she needs to follow Rosie’s lead and get out of town.

Happy Fourth of July to all those patriotic Americans who love our country, and who are not at war with our president.

We originally ran this story on May 14, 2025. The Catholic League has been out in front on this issue, and we were the first organization in the nation to defend Pope Leo XIV. In light of the New York Times running a similar article today, we are releasing it again. While the Times is mostly fair, we wanted to ensure that Bill Donohue’s extensive work on this topic was readily available to counter any misconceptions that some people might draw from the Times.

Bill Donohue

Few things excite the media more than a juicy sex story about Catholic priests, no matter how half-baked the story is. The latest iteration of this phenomenon came on the day Cardinal Robert Prevost became Pope Leo XIV. Wasting no time claiming he is guilty of covering up priestly sexual abuse was SNAP (Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests).

On May 8, it slammed the new pope for the way he addressed accusations of priestly sexual abuse in the United States and Peru. Indeed, six weeks before he was elected, this totally discredited association of anti-Catholic activists filed a complaint with the Vatican saying that Cardinal Prevost “harmed the vulnerable.” The facts prove otherwise.

In 2000, when Father Prevost was the provincial supervisor in Chicago for the Augustinians, he allowed a suspended homosexual priest who had been accused of sexually abusing minors to reside at a rectory not far from a Catholic school. Father James Ray lived there with other priests and restrictions were placed on him.

Two years later, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued the Dallas reforms, new guidelines dealing with clergy sexual abuse. It was then that Ray was removed from the Augustinian residence, as well as from public ministry. He was tossed from the priesthood in 2012.

Now it is legitimate to question the decision to place Ray near a school, but to jump to the conclusion that this was an egregious dereliction of duty is absurd. Had Ray been put up in a hotel in a deserted part of town, Prevost’s critics would say he was left unsupervised.

The more intricate case is the one dealing with three sisters from Peru. SNAP says, “When Prevost was Bishop of Chiclayo, three victims reported to civil authorities in 2022 after there was no movement on their canonical case filed through the diocese.” They claim he “failed to open an investigation, sent inadequate information to Rome, and that the diocese allowed the priest to continue saying mass.”

None of this is true. Here’s what happened.

In April 2022, three sisters made accusations about two priests to church authorities about sexual abuse (inappropriate touching) dating back to 2007 when they were minors. The bishop of Chiclayo was Msgr. Robert Prevost.

Contrary to what SNAP reports, the priest was removed from the parish where he worked and prohibited from exercising his ministerial duties.

Also contrary to what SNAP reports, Prevost met with the women in April 2022 and encouraged them to take their case to civil authorities. Meanwhile he opened a canonical probe. He also offered them psychological help.

In July 2022, Prevost contacted the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith after the investigation was completed. A Vatican probe found that the allegations lacked sufficient evidence to warrant further action. Moreover, the statute of limitations had long expired. In addition, the civil investigation was also dismissed for lack of evidence and because the statute of limitations had expired.

The women weren’t satisfied and registered another complaint. The diocese responded by sending further documentation to the Vatican. (In April 2023, Msgr. Prevost was named Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops in Rome.)

In November 2023, Ana Maria Quispe, the oldest of the sisters, contended that both the civil and ecclesiastical courts were wrong. She started a social media campaign to keep her account alive.

The case was then reopened by the Apostolic Administrator in Chiclayo, addressing her complaint. Victims were summoned to meet but Quispe never showed up.

Meanwhile, there was another development happening, one which SNAP is deadly silent on.

In April 2024, after Archbishop José Eguren, a member of an ultra-conservative movement, the Peruvian Sodalitium of Christian Life, was ousted—he was accused of abuse and financial wrongdoing—accusations of a Cardinal Prevost coverup percolated.

To understand why Prevost was being accused, consider the role that Fr. Ricardo Coronado played. In May 2024, Coronado, a canon lawyer, took up the women’s cases. He was associated with this extremist movement and was widely believed to have engaged in corruption, violence and sexual abuse.

In August 2024, the Peruvian Bishops’ Conference issued a public statement saying Coronado could no longer practice canon law. He was accused of having a sexual relationship with a consenting adult.

Off-the-record comments against Coronado continued to surface from Augustinian priests. They maintained that he “despised” Prevost and that he was guilty of “a pattern of sexually inappropriate and aggressive behavior.”

In January 2025, Pope Francis and Cardinal Prevost met with one of the group’s abuse victims. Weeks before he died, the pope dissolved the movement.

Pedro Salinas, a noted Peruvian journalist who knows this issue well, said Prevost played “an extremely important role” in ending it. In fact, he said, “The campaign of disinformation and discrediting Robert Prevost’s career has always come from the source of Robert Prevost, Archbishop Eguren.”

Having written a book on this subject, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes, I can say with confidence that the accusations of a coverup by Cardinal Prevost are false. If anything, Pope Leo XIV acted fairly and with dispatch.

Bill Donohue

July 1, 2025

I asked some young staffers if they ever heard of Jimmy Swaggart. As expected, they had not. He was an old-time anti-Catholic bigot who made it big, and then had a major fall from grace. He died July 1. The Pentecostal televangelist was 90. His cousins were Mickey Gilley and Jerry Lee Lewis, two accomplished entertainers.

On August 21, 2006, we received a fax from a man who wrote, “My mother-in-law—a Pentecostal subscribes to this magazine [he sent a copy of ‘The Evangelist’], and this has to be one of the many reasons she thinks her daughter is lost because her daughter, my wife, is now Catholic. Jimmy Swaggart is spreading anti-Catholic articles to his subscribers of the magazine, ‘The Evangelist.’”

The man was right. Swaggart was an inveterate anti-Catholic bigot (he also lashed out at other Protestants and Jews).

In the 1980s, Swaggart said, “I maintain that the Catholic superstructure and organization is not really a Christian organization. Its claims are false.” He constantly bashed the pope, saying he was “the most evil man alive.” In one of his tracts, “A Letter to My Catholic Friends,” he said of his “friends” that they are “poor pitiful individuals who think they have enriched themselves spiritually by kissing the pope’s ring”; he urged them to leave the Church.

Catholics were idolaters. As proof, he said, they participate in “Mary-worship.” Their belief in Purgatory, he argued, “provided the Catholic Church with a very effective means to rake heaping piles of money into its coffers.” The Church was guilty of “greed,” the quest for “political power,” and promoting the “the cult of Peter.”

Swaggart proved to be such an influential bigot that several TV stations, including Boston and Atlanta, dropped his show in the mid-1980s. However, he was still seen in 550 outlets nationwide.

In the end, what finished him was not his anti-Catholicism. He was photographed visiting a prostitute in New Orleans. After an investigation by the Assemblies of God, he went on TV to beg for forgiveness and apologized to his wife. But his apology proved to be insincere: he was later caught with another hooker.

The genre of anti-Catholicism that Swaggart represented is no longer predominant. His theological animus against the Catholic Church has been eclipsed by militant secularists. They are bent on privatizing, if not destroying, Catholicism. Just as mean-spirited, they are much better educated, and are therefore much more dangerous. In fact, they occupy most of the command posts in America, especially those that specialize in the dissemination of ideas (e.g., education, the media and publishing).

Swaggart is history. May his family come to terms with his legacy.