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.