The Diocese of Buffalo, currently led by Bishop Michael Fisher, has sadistically isolated one of its priests for six long years for daring to publicly expose its secret system of operations which protected sexual predator priests. Those operations relied on the complicity of several diocesan officials still leading us TODAY who have never faced accountability. Some have even received diocesan honors. This is terrifying. If Father Ryszard Biernat has to face accountability for his decisions, these officials should too.
What the Whistleblower Revealed
In September 2019, as priest-secretary to the bishop and vice-chancellor of the diocese, Father Biernat gave local news media evidence of Bishop Richard Malone’s continued failure to properly remove priests from ministry who were credibly accused of sexual predatory behavior (and violating the seal of the confessional on one case). Bishop Malone responded to the whistleblowing by suspending Father Biernat from all public ministry on December 3, 2019, the day before Bishop Malone resigned in disgrace. Bishop Fisher maintains that penalty against Father Biernat.
But it was a follow-up allegation from Father Biernat that same day in 2019 that gave the public a harrowing look into what appeared to be a system of operations which protected sexual predator priests. That allegation was the public revelation of how diocesan officials handled Father Biernat’s own report of sexual abuse at the hands of a diocesan priest back in 2003 when he was a seminarian.
Rather than investigate the seminarian’s allegation when it was reported in early 2004, Auxiliary Bishop Edward Grosz allegedly threatened seminarian Biernat with blackballing him from ever becoming a priest if he reported the incident to anyone. The WKBW televised report below is the very news report the State Attorney General’s Office referenced in their interrogation of Bishops Malone and Grosz a couple months later. It is important to watch this 5-minute video to understand the gravity of his allegations. Warning: Explicit content.
Bishops Malone and Grosz admitted in sworn testimony they did not open an investigation into the seminarian’s allegations, following precedent from former bishops who failed to handle Biernat’s case according to established norms since 2004. But those bishops did not act alone. It appears they had plenty of help in covering up that particular sexual abuse allegation with the aid of subordinate diocesan officials. Some of those same officials are still in positions of authority in the diocese today.
It wasn’t until the state’s 2020 lawsuit against the diocese and its bishops that the public got to read how specific diocesan officials either helped the bishops cover up their gross mismanagement of these cases or tacitly ignored their moral/civic/canonical duties to properly handle such reports according to norms established at the time. We also learned how these officials appear to be groomed in the system to maintain the deception by playing along with decisions that put laity at risk, harmed victims and protected sexual predators.
Evidence Points to a Cast of Diocesan Officials Complicit in Covering Up This Allegation of Clergy Sexual Abuse
The Biernat case, in particular, appeared to contain the most evidence of corruption by a cast of diocesan officials, as we read in the state’s lawsuit and its supporting documents that were eventually released to local media outlets ( here and here). I am a corroborating witness not only to Father Biernat’s allegation of sexual assault by Father Art Smith in 2003, but Bishop Grosz’s threats to keep Biernat from reporting the crime. As a seminarian, Biernat confided to me in 2006 the details of both the sexual assault and bishop Grosz’s threats. I have been following the careers of all the diocesan officials involved in this depraved case ever since.
I offered my corroborative testimony to the State Attorney General’s office (sex crimes unit) while it was still investigating the diocese. It is evident in documents cited in the state AG lawsuit (page 174) that Monsignor Robert Cunningham (apostolic administrator) participated with Bishop Grosz and Monsignor David LiPuma in the initial coverup of seminarian Biernat’s allegation. They did this by objectively misleading the victim about the true nature of the assault, attempting to portray it as not even rising to the level of sexual harassment. That corresponds to Father Biernat’s description of their responses which he relayed to me in 2006. No attorney was consulted by anyone on the diocese’s end.
This deception clearly was designed to encouraged the seminarian to ignore his own sexual abuse. Bishop Grosz’s May 28, 2004 memo notes that he met with Monsignor Richard Siepka (seminary rector) and Monsignor LiPuma. Grosz scribbled in his memo that the seminarian’s allegation was merely “attempted sexual abuse.” Once Monsignor Cunningham left the diocese and Bishop Grosz became administrator (with full charge of the diocese), diocesan officials’ clear goal with this situation shifted to Smith and Biernat making peace with each other. According to one of Bishop Grosz’s memos, the seminarian needed to offer “forgiveness” (classic spiritual manipulation) to the trusted priest that molested him, and, as Father James Croglio (director of diocesan counseling) articulated, both men needed to find “closure.” Nowhere among Bishop Grosz’s notes on this subject do we find interest from any of the participating officials in reporting the allegation to civil authorities or the Diocesan Review Board or the diocesan attorney.
All the while, Monsignor Siepka appeared to maintained his silence (complicity) and never approached the new Bishop Edward Kmiec about the seminarian’s case, as Bishop Grosz testified under oath. This is the monsignor who received the diocese’s Cure of Ars Award in October, 2024.
I remember back in 2006 seminarian Biernat telling me that Monsignor Siepka kept promising him he would talk to the new bishop about the sexual assault allegation, but there is no evidence he ever did. With no investigation that should have gone through the Diocesan Review Board and no support from the seminary, the seminarian mailed his own written report to the diocese detailing his allegation. He said it included emails from Father Smith admitting his actions. Both of the bishops’ sworn testimonies acknowledged that no report or investigation resulted from the allegation and the diocesan attorneys were not informed. Terry Connors, diocesan attorney, has attested to this as well.
Bishop Grosz’s alleged threats to the seminarian to keep him from reporting his assault was something the seminarian did not make known to diocesan officials at the time. To whom would he make this report? Bishop Grosz? As Bishops Malone and Grosz testified, this allegation has not been investigated to this day. Bishop Grosz has consistently denied he made the threats; he again denied them under oath. Bishop Malone, in his sworn testimony, stated he believes Bishop Grosz.
Biernat said he waited “months and months in silence.” He said he found it impossible to schedule a meeting with Bishop Kmiec. Was this because Monsignor LiPuma controlled the calendar? It wasn’t until a seminary professor, Father Charles Amico (who knew about the allegation), threatened an old-fashioned sit-in on behalf of the seminarian that an audience with the bishop was finally granted. As Grosz’s deposition revealed, and as the seminarian told me in 2006, Bishop Kmiec brushed off the allegation and told both Bishop Grosz and the seminarian that the matter with Father Smith would be handled.
All the officials in the know just drifted on in silence as if nothing occurred—clearly, a form of complicity to protect a sexual predator, or the diocese’s reputation, or score Brownie points with the new bishop or a combination of the above. In fact, so many officials knew about the seminarian’s sexual assault allegation that Father Croglio expressed concern about “confidentiality.” In his June 3, 2004 memo to Bishop Grosz, he listed the following priests in the know:
“Cunningham, Rev. Leon J. Biernat [the seminarian’s cousin], Rev. Joseph F. Burke [the seminarian’s counsellor], Rev. Gregory M. Faulhaber [at the time seminary formation director/instructor of moral theology, today serves on diocese’s priest personnel board], Rev. David G. LiPuma [Kmiec’s secretary/vice chancellor], Rev. Richard W. Siepka. Obviously, others also know.”
None of the above listed grown men involved with the case appeared interested in encouraging the seminarian to report his allegation of sexual assault to civil authorities or to even have it investigated in house. May God have mercy on their souls.
This civil report would have fallen within the state’s statute of limitations. Smith’s alleged act upon the seminarian could very well have been Sexual Abuse in the First Degree (§ 130.65), a Class D violent felony because it involved sexual contact of intimate parts and put the victim in a state of fear (watch Biernat’s video above). In New York State, this offense can carry a jail sentence, a minimum fine of $33,000, probation up to five years and registration as a sex offender. In 2019 a priest in California found guilty of a similar sexual act with a seminarian in a bar bathroom (albeit with clothes on) was sentenced with similar penalties for sexual battery.
Many of those same officials who Father Croglio listed as in-the-know about the allegation are still at work in our diocese serving in official capacities. It seems clear that some of their behaviors within the framework of gospel values is irreconcilable. A case can be made that all those officials involved have de facto forfeited any right to titles of office, diocesan leadership positions or honors, based on their decisions/actions in this one case alone.
But the story does not end there. As the years rolled on, Monsignor LiPuma placed his initials with Bishop Kmiec’s on a draft of an announcement deceiving parishioners at a Hamburg parish about the reason their pastor, Father Smith, was leaving. The diocese called it “medical leave” when in reality the Diocesan Review Board found that Father Smith attempted to groom a Catholic school boy among other concerns that led Bishop Kmiec to order him into a psychological treatment center. As Bishop Malone’s secretary/vice chancellor, Monsignor LiPuma aided Father Smith’s transfer to at least two assignments that led to more allegations of Father Smith’s unwanted inappropriate touching of young adult males. This is the same Monsignor LiPuma who received the diocese’s Champion for Catholic Education Award in 2024 and the Catholic School Administrators Association of New York State’s Lighting the Fire for Catholic Education Award in 2017. Pope Benedict honored him with the title of Monsignor in 2008 (for distinguished service to the Church), but that title did not come without Bishop Kmiec’s solicitation.
Officials in any organization, by definition, are supposed to take ownership of the outcome. That’s called accountability. But the only accountability diocesan officials have encountered is the penalty imposed upon Father Biernat.
The former Chancellor of the Diocese of Buffalo, Sister Regina Murphy, SSNM, long-entrenched (read: groomed) in diocesan headquarters with perhaps the most comprehensive knowledge of clergy abuse cases, drew the line in the sand in terms of Father Biernat having his suspension from ministry lifted. She emailed Father Biernat:
“Please note that a penal remedy [imposed by Bishop Malone on the eve of his retirement] is not permanent and can be lifted if you do what has been requested of you and if you truly regret what seem to have been poor choices on your part.”
In a 2020 Polish television documentary series that examined the clergy sexual abuse crisis in the Diocese of Buffalo, Father Biernat talked about his case which included revealing some of the graphic details of the night Father Smith slid into his bed. It is difficult to watch. The bishop and his diocesan officials have an expectation of an expression of remorse from this whistleblower. Choking back tears, Father Biernat offered this heart-wrenching statement of remorse for the entire world to see and hear:
Fr. Biernat: If I had revealed this [Father Smith’s sexual assault] publicly at the time, at least four people wouldn’t have been harmed by Father Smith. I wouldn’t be a priest now, but four people would have a simpler life.
Interviewer: Do you reproach yourself for that?
Fr. Biernat: Yes.
Interviewer: Your superiors don’t seem to care.
Fr. Biernat: They don’t. [long pause] Even today.
Father Biernat’s decision to whistleblow harmed no one’s body or soul. Yet it is manifestly clear that diocesan officials certainly did contribute to harming at least one seminarian in this well-documented case. Who can deny their masochistic treatment of this victim of a credibly-accused sexual predator priest who these officials tried so hard to protect? Neither the Church nor Jesus Christ authorizes these officials to operate with impunity. Where is their display of remorse?
That Father Biernat is still suspended from active ministry in the Diocese of Buffalo is all the evidence we need that our bishop still doesn’t get what actual reform looks like.
I write this with all due respect as a member of the laity commissioned via my baptism to share the responsibility in advancing the mission of the Church. That commission does not include supporting a management system that equates whistleblowers with traitors. It does not include passive, obsequious deference to diocesan officials who sadistically isolate interior threats to their secret system of operations that ruined people’s lives and decimated precious souls. If Father Biernat has to face accountability for his decisions, so should these officials.
Whistleblowing from officials in the Diocese of Buffalo began in 2018 with Siobhan O’Connor, Bishop Malone’s executive assistant. Father Biernat followed up the next year. (Read my book detailing what these whistleblowers disclosed here). The Buffalo News ran a feature update on them in 2023. Today Father Biernat is still a priest, albeit without faculties. The diocese includes him among diocesan priests in its official diocesan directory, listing him with an address at diocesan headquarters–the same type of listing the diocese gives credibly-accused clergy sexual predators.
