Bishop’s Secret List of Accused Priests Leaves Him Besieged
Bishop Richard J. Malone of Buffalo is facing calls for his resignation over a growing clergy sexual abuse scandal.
Bishop Richard J. Malone kept a secret black binder in a closet with a list of Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse. He was recorded in a conversation expressing more concern about his own reputation than about removing a priest whom he called dangerous and a “sick puppy.” And some of the bishop’s own clergy are circulating a letter of no-confidence in him.
Numerous Catholic bishops across the United States have become involved in controversies over their handling of clergy sexual abuse. But perhaps none has become as embroiled in scandal over the past year as Bishop Malone of Buffalo, one of the largest dioceses in the Northeast.
In an extraordinary turn of events in the hierarchical church, Bishop Malone is approaching persona non grata status in his own diocese. Some organizations are canceling events that he was set to attend, and he is declining other invitations, local Catholics said.
“Collections are drying up in parishes,” said John J. Hurley, the president of Canisius College in Buffalo and a leader of a lay group that had been working with Bishop Malone but is now calling for his resignation. “People are walking out of the parishes saying ‘I’ve had enough.’”
But despite revelations from whistle-blowers and calls from lay leaders and priests for him to step down, Bishop Malone has declined to do so.
Before 2018, the Buffalo diocese, which has 600,000 Catholics, had largely avoided the kind of turmoil over clergy sexual abuse that has occurred elsewhere in the country.
But then an accuser went public, saying that a priest, who has since retired, had molested him as teenager. That led dozens of other accusers to come forward, saying that they had also been abused by current or former priests.
As the number of accused priests grew, Bishop Malone’s handling of the crisis was quickly called into question because he had promised transparency but, in case after case, appeared to be shielding priests who were accused of abuse, local Catholics said.
Hundreds of people have now filed sexual abuse claims against clergy with the Buffalo diocese, or lawsuits under New York’s new Child Victims Act. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the state attorney general’s office have opened investigations.
Bishop Malone’s standing is being closely watched as a test of a new, tougher policy on bishop accountability that was adopted by Pope Francis in May in an effort to contain clergy sexual abuse scandals worldwide. It comes as at least 18 state attorneys general in the United States have begun investigations into clergy sexual abuse and its cover-up by church leaders.
Last week, after one such inquiry, the Missouri attorney general referred a dozen former priests for potential criminal prosecution.
Bishop Malone, who has been Buffalo’s bishop since 2012, declined to be interviewed.
Asked how he viewed the calls for him to resign, he said in a statement:“I am respectfully attentive to them. I am committed to my obligations as bishop of Buffalo and to fulfilling the mission of the church.”
“Our church is hurting, especially victims and their loved ones, as are all Catholics,” but the mission of the church continues, he said.
Does he feel the diocese can heal with him in the pulpit?
“Yes” he replied. “We can begin the road to healing with close collaboration with others in the diocese.”
Only Pope Francis can force Bishop Malone to step down. But Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York, can begin an investigation of Bishop Malone and pressure him to leave under the new papal process that is supposed to usher in an era of increased bishop accountability.
“The amount of opposition that he is facing in his diocese right now is without match in the United States,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of BishopAccountability.org, which tracks abuse scandals. “It is just a matter of time until Pope Francis removes him.”
Cardinal Dolan “has been following the situation very closely and has been consulting extensively,” Joseph Zwilling, his spokesman, said. “I would anticipate that we will hear something within the near future regarding this matter.”
Over the years, the leadership of the Buffalo diocese had assured local Catholics that the scandals involving pedophile priests elsewhere would never happen there.
So it came as a shock when Michael F. Whalen, 52, gave a news conference in February 2018 and accused the Rev. Norbert Orsolits of molesting him on a ski trip in the 1980s, when Mr. Whalen was a teenager.
Father Orsolits then admitted to a reporter for The Buffalo News that he had sexually abused “probably dozens” of teenage boys in the late 1970s and early ’80s before entering treatment. He retired in 2004 and could not be reached for comment.
A flood of other accusations of abuse by priests began to pour into the diocese and the local news media, some involving priests still in the pulpit. In March 2018, under pressure, Bishop Malone published a list of 42 Buffalo priests who had been credibly accused of child sexual abuse over decades.
But Siobhan O’Connor, his administrative assistant who would become the diocese’s most prominent whistle-blower, had seen the draft list.
It had 117 priest names on it, she said. Among those omitted from the final list were active priests, she said, and priests whom the bishop had shielded in the past.
“It was curated to deceive the public,” she said in an interview last week.
Ms. O’Connor began photocopying and photographing documents, some of which were taken from a secret black binder of accusations kept in the bishop’s closet.
She leaked them in August 2018 to a local television reporter and went public on “60 Minutes” last October, after leaving her job.
One of the omissions involved the Rev. Fabian J. Maryanski. He was still in the pulpit, even though news reports, quoting the secret documents, said the diocese had known since 1995 that he had been accused of sexual contact with a teenage girl in a church rectory.
One lawyer had written to Bishop Malone: “We did not remove him from ministry despite full knowledge of the case, and so including him on list might require explanation.”
Father Maryanski was placed on administrative leave after news broke of his omission from the list.
“I deny that I had sex with a teenage girl,” he said on Monday. “I never have.”
As the scandals snowballed, the diocese’s seminary, Christ the King, was ensnared, too.
Last month, a former dean of seminarians resigned over concerns about the moral climate in the seminary, and another seminarian, Matthew Bojanowski, also quit.
Mr. Bojanowski told reporters he left because Bishop Malone had taken no action for nine months regarding a complaint he had made against a parish priest, the Rev. Jeffrey Nowak, whom he had accused of making sexual passes at him.
Mr. Bojanowski also accused Father Nowak of using information the priest had learned in confession against him and photographing a personal letter of his in an effort to blackmail him.
Father Nowak’s lawyer, James Granville, said his client “denies everything.”
The stolen letter was promptly leaked to the news media.
It had been sent to Mr. Bojanowski by the bishop’s trusted secretary and vice chancellor, the Rev. Ryszard Biernat, and it read like a love letter between Mr. Bojanowski and Father Biernat.
The two men bought a small house together in 2018, according to a real estate listing in The Buffalo News, but have said their relationship is platonic.
As the months went on with no action by Bishop Malone to suspend Father Nowak, Father Biernat began secretly recording conversations he had with Bishop Malone about the case.
In the recordings, the bishop is heard calling Father Nowak a “sick puppy” for his obsession with Mr. Bojanowski, and worrying that the scandal would be portrayed as a love triangle among the three men.
“We are in a true crisis situation,” Bishop Malone said in one recording in August, leaked to the TV station WKBW. “True crisis. And everyone in the office is convinced this could be the end for me as bishop.”
He also hints at why he had not yet informed the parishioners of Father Nowak’s parish, Our Lady Help of Christians Church, about the accusations.
“Between you and me, Jeff Nowak is dangerous,” Bishop Malone tells Father Biernat in the recording. “I think if we bring Jeff in, who knows what he’s going to do.”
In late August, Father Nowak was placed on administrative leave.
Father Biernat is on a leave of absence and has a lawyer. He has separately said that he was also a victim of abuse by a priest while in the seminary, but that he had been instructed by an assistant bishop to keep quiet about it.
At a Sept. 4 news conference, Bishop Malone defended his handling of the Nowak case and again refused to resign.
“I don’t feel its time for me to move on,” he said. “I believe the ones who would like to see me move on are a minority.”
That seemed to be the last straw for some. On Sept. 5, a council of prominent lay people that had formed to help the diocese through the crisis, the Movement to Restore Trust, called for him to step down so the diocese could move forward.
Some Buffalo priests began circulating a letter of no-confidence, based on a similar letter circulated in Boston during its clergy abuse crisis in 2002.
An online petition calling for Bishop Malone’s resignation gathered about 12,500 signatures. On Tuesday, The Buffalo News published a poll that said 86 percent of local Catholics wanted him to leave.
The Rev. Robert Zilliox, a canon lawyer, drafted the no-confidence letter. Father Zilliox, who said he was a victim of abuse by a priest when he was 13, said he had firsthand knowledge of at least “two or three cases” where Bishop Malone had returned priests to ministry despite accusations against them, against church protocol.
“He has been picking and choosing” when to send cases to Rome as required, he said.
The diocese, he said, is now racked by division, with some parishes trying to isolate themselves from the bishop.
Even so, he said, he was having trouble getting most of the 270 or so active and retired priests in Buffalo to sign their names to the letter.
As of Wednesday, he said, only 18 priests had signed. He fretted that it would not be enough.
“We can’t put up with this for another year and a half,” he said, referring to when Bishop Malone would turn 75 and automatically be required to submit his resignation to the pope. “I am challenging my brother priests to step up.”
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