Hidden Evil: The Anti-Catholic Agenda of Bishop Accountability

David F Pierre, Jr exposes anti-Catholic hostility and bias masked as support for victims. The goal of Bishop Accountability is to bankrupt and empty the Church.

October 1, 2025 by David F. Pierre, Jr., Editor of The Media Report

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Late last week Beyond These Stone Walls published at our Voices from Beyond feature an essay by Father Michael P. Orsi, former Research Director at Ave Maria University School of Law. The title of Father Orsi’s brief but brilliant essay, previously published in the Catholic League Journal, Catalyst, is “Bogus Charges Against Priests Abound.”

It is a stunning review of one of the revelatory books by David F. Pierre, Jr. entitled, Catholic Priests Falsely Accused: The Facts, The Fraud, The Stories. Among its content is a bold chapter about the case against me.

Also at Voices from Beyond this week, we feature another very prominent figure in the American Catholic Church who published an equally stunning review of David F. Pierre, Jr.’s latest book, The Greatest Fraud Never Told. The reviewer is Father Peter M.J. Stravinskas, an accomplished theologian and Editor of The Catholic Response. His excellent review was previously published at The Catholic Thing : “At the Mercy of One False Brother.”

Mr. Pierre has graciously acceded to write about the online continuation of a fraud perpetrated against the Church by BishopAccountability.org.

Now here is David F. Pierre, Jr.

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The web site BishopAccountability.org likes to fashion itself as merely a “public library of information” that curates a vast “database of accused Roman Catholic priests” as it relates to sexual abuse. The site catalogs literally thousands of priests who have been only accused of sexual abuse whether they are alive or long-dead. For this, Bishop Accountability has naturally become a darling of the legacy media which continues to revel in keeping the embers of the “Catholic Church sex abuse story” alive while browbeating the Church for the sins of a small minority of priests from many decades ago.

But there is an evil that consumes the site. And this evil has absolutely nothing to do with the abuse of children.

For starters, there is little semblance of fairness or due process at Bishop Accountability. A visitor could easily conclude that the thousands of priests profiled on the site must be “guilty of something” for them to even be listed there. Indeed, that is really the whole purpose of the site: to suggest guilt by association. Only after a series of clicks can a visitor find the site’s “posting policy,” which could be paraphrased as such: “If a priest has been publicly accused of abuse at any time, we will plaster his name, photo, and history here for all of the world to see.”

Bishop Accountability’s False Promise

What about the priests who are clearly innocent, you ask? Well, by its very own admission, guilt or innocence plays no role whatsoever on whether or not a priest is profiled on its site. Here is one exception that Bishop Accountability has made: 

“If a survivor publicly withdraws an allegation, recants, or states that the alleged perpetrator has been misidentified, and if there are no other allegations of abuse against the accused cleric, that cleric is removed from the database.”

Interesting that Bishop Accountability still identifies a fraudster who has recanted his allegation as a “survivor.” This makes no sense at all, of course. Indeed, if there is any “survivor” in a false accusation, it would be the falsely accused priest himself who has “survived” the ordeal and had his life ruined. But Bishop Accountability does not see it that way. In short, Bishop Accountability will post the identity and photo of any priest accused of anything sex abuse related, no matter how old, wacky, or implausible the accusations are. 

Take the case of Diocese of Charleston Bishop Robert Guglielmone from a few years back. In 2019, a man openly admitted to a family member that he made up an abuse claim against Guglielmone in order to extract money from the Church. The man even blithely stated, “It’s worth a try.” The entire accusation was completely bogus and ridiculous, yet Bishop Guglielmone, who swiftly returned to ministry after the truth surfaced, is still listed on Bishop Accountability — along with his photo, of course — as if he were a convicted child molester.

And although Bishop Accountability claims that it will not post the profiles of priests whose accusers have recanted, this itself is not even true. Rev. John M. Costello, a Jesuit priest in the Diocese of Rochester, had his entire life upended in 2003 after a former student claimed that he had abused him some two decades earlier. However, after investigators began to scrutinize the chap’s claim, the accuser recanted and told investigators that “another priest,” not Costello, had abused him. But, defying its very own policy, Bishop Accountability continues to profile Costello on its site for the entire world to see.

Even the Dead Are Fair Game

There is also the legion of cases involving single accusations against long-dead priests. Some readers are old enough to remember a time when one would not dare say anything unproven about a dead person to abide by the truth that “dead people cannot defend themselves.” But when it comes to Catholic priests and Bishop Accountability, they proudly attack the dead and defenseless.

Just a couple of years ago, in 2023, a man contacted the Diocese of Albany to claim that Fr. J. Gregory Mulhall “physically assaulted” him as a “vulnerable adult" many decades earlier. What did Fr. Mulhall have to say about this? Well, not much, as he had died at age 90 over two decades earlier, in 2001. (Mulhall was ordained in 1937, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was President.) Fr. Mulhall’s surviving friends and family members are naturally none too happy about him being publicly profiled as if he were a convicted child predator.

Another dead priest who would probably want to respond to an accusation against him if he were alive is Fr. Gregory Flohr, who died in 2004. Flohr did not have a single blemish against him in over four decades in ministry. It was not until many years after Flohr died that an anonymous male accuser saw the possibility of a large cash windfall and came forward to lodge a bizarre claim against Flohr that no reasonable person would ever believe. Yet Fr. Flohr is still included in Bishop Accountability’s “database” even though he is obviously unable to defend himself.

The Surprising Truth About Falsely Accused Priests

It is now an undeniable fact that false accusations against Catholic priests are rampant. In recent years as little as 6% of historical abuse claims against priests have even been deemed “substantiated” by the very lenient standards of diocesan review boards, with the majority of accusations deemed either “unsubstantiated” (indeed false), “unable to be proven,” or still under review. 

In 2021, in a church of 70 million people in the United States, 44 current minors came forward alleging that a current priest had recently abused them. However, only four of these 44 were ever found to even be “substantiated,” while the remaining 40 (or 91% (!)) were found to be completely bogus. 

Why is there a rampancy of false accusations? That answer is easy. Easy money. For the past two-and-a-half decades, the Church has been shoveling out cash to accusers and their tort lawyers like an ATM on tilt, and grifters have long taken notice. As Fr. Gordon MacRae himself chronicled two decades ago, an East-coast attorney confirmed as far back as 2001 that accusing a Catholic priest of sex abuse was a “current and popular scam” among criminals in prison looking for an easy cash payout. And, yes, this hustle still continues to this day.

Meanwhile, states like California and New York have made it easy for flimflammers to get in on the action by repeatedly enacting “window legislation” that temporarily suspends the statute of limitations and allows any fraudster or con artist to sue the Catholic Church for big bucks, no matter how long ago or crazy the abuse claim. Statutes of limitation, due process, and fairness have been discarded in order to line the pockets of tort lawyers and fleece the Catholic Church.

A couple of years ago, Thomas R. Hampson of Illinois, a 40-year veteran investigator with thousands of sex abuse investigations, wrote of what he witnessed in the Archdiocese of Chicago:

“There were priests who were falsely accused of abuse but the archdiocese settled anyway. I know they were false accusations because the stories were outrageous. No details. Implausible circumstances. And a reaction that wasn’t believable. Even in a civil trial these cases could not prove by a preponderance of the evidence that anything actually happened, much less that the accused was the one who did it. In most of those cases the priest was already dead.”

Hampson also added that in the current-day fever swamp in which people must “believe the accusers,” the principle of innocent until proven guilty has been abandoned such that the investigators are looking merely for confirmation of the accused’s guilt.

And what has been the end result of all this? The coffers of the Catholic Church have been drained by literally billions of dollars, robbing it of resources to build the faith and serve the poor.

The Sheer Evil of It All

Bishop Accountability claims that its site is dedicated to “the victims and their families and loved ones.” The reality could not be further from the truth.

There is a kind of underlying spiritual aura to Bishop Accountability that cannot be ignored. And that spirit is evil. Satan, along with his demon partners, hate the Catholic Church and everything it stands for, which is truth. Satan’s rage against Christ and the Catholic Church is eternal and continues today. Writer Thomas J. Nash has recently written about this reality:

“Satan and his demonic minions are irredeemably opposed to the truth. They hate the truth. More to the point, they hate him who is ‘the way, and the truth, and the life,’ our Lord Jesus Christ (John 14:6) … Consequently, Satan and his demonic minions really hate the sacrifice of the Mass and Eucharistic Adoration in general because they are daily reminders of Christ overcoming them and their infernal kingdom through the Cross.”

One of Satan’s great successes in recent years is perpetuating the lie that the priesthood of the Catholic Church is an irredeemable den of sexual immorality and corruption. Much of the recent breakdown in the fabric of Western civilization over the last 25 or 30 years can be directly tied to the nonstop media campaign against the Catholic Church tied to the sex abuse issue and the resulting silence of the hierarchy in opposing the many social initiatives that have brought so much harm to our societies. It has also torn God’s people away from the Eucharist, the Mass, and the Catholic Church itself.

In trampling on the rights of innocent priests, defaming the dead, and trafficking in innuendo, there is little doubt that Bishop Accountability has been a great asset to Satan in his battle against the Catholic Church.

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David F. Pierre, Jr. is the country’s leading observer of the media’s coverage of the Catholic Church abuse narrative and is the author of four acclaimed books, the most recent of which is The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church (Amazon.com). 

David is also the creator and author of TheMediaReport.com, an educational cooperative to chronicle and monitor the mainstream media’s coverage of the Catholic Church sex abuse narrative. 

Please also check out TheMediaReport.com’s important posts on the case of Fr. MacRae: *EXCLUSIVE REPORT* Alarming New Evidence May Exonerate Imprisoned Priest 

Journalism Outside the Box: Wall St. Journal Bravely Profiles Stunning Case of Wrongfully Convicted Priest Fr. Gordon MacRae

The Wall Street Journal Again Profiles Case of Fr Gordon MacRae

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Cardinal George Pell Is on Trial, and So Is Australia

The trial of Cardinal George Pell for “historic” sexual abuse claims is underway in Australia, but the state of Australian justice also has the world’s attention.

“Why have a trial at all? Just take the man into the Outback and shoot him.”

“Trial by Media.” The ominous term has already been a part of the public record in regard to Australia’s Cardinal George Pell. I used the term myself in a post two years ago entitled, “Peter Saunders and Cardinal Pell: A Trial by Media.”

The concern for the poisoning of justice through leaks to a toxic and predatory news media is nothing new, but “Trial by Media” hangs like the burial shroud of justice itself over the trial of Cardinal Pell on 40-year-old claims of sexual abuse.

Lest anyone doubt the power of the media to both generate such claims and shape justice and due process in a case like this, consider a recent issue of The Week, a popular weekly news magazine.  The Week  presents itself as “The Best of the U.S. and International Media.” It selects excerpts from online media and newspapers throughout the world and presents them as the best written accounts of the week’s top stories.

In its July 21, 2017 issue, The Week chose as the best of the media from Australia a column by Barney Zwartz in The Age entitled, “The Nation’s Top Catholic in the Dock.” It should raise the alarm for anyone concerned for the media’s role in all this, and the slant it presents. Here is an excerpt:

“After decades of rumors, Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, is finally facing trial for child sexual abuse. At this point, Australians are numb to the horror, having endured years of parliamentary reports that produced damning evidence against so many priests…”

We can only hope that Australians are not so “numb” that they don’t see through this language. It is an open invitation to a lynch mob. The phrase, “after decades of rumors” should alarm everyone from the start. For any objective observer of this story, the only “damning evidence” is the accusations themselves and the fact that there has been a sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in Australia.

This is the state of the evidence thus far presented against Cardinal Pell as this “Trial by Media” gets underway. To incite a community to forego due process in favor of emotion is the very foundation of all witch hunts. An “availability bias” has been built that places Catholic priests in a suspect class. I described its momentum in “How SNAP Brought McCarthyism to American Catholics.”

Conditioned by a predatory media, Australians are now invited to ignore the abyss that is empty of evidence, and weigh the claims against Cardinal Pell with nothing of substance except “decades of rumors” that left Australians “numb to the horror.” The same media-fueled moral panic swept America and spread like a virus.

Now some of those who used it for profit are themselves before the bar of justice — (See “David Clohessy Resigns SNAP in Alleged Kickback Scheme”). But Mr. Zwartz and The Week  present other “evidence” as well, and it is a central but unspoken feature in the indictment of Cardinal Pell:

“A combative participant in Australia’s culture wars,” the ultraconservative Pell had long been a divisive figure in Australia because of his `relentless, overbearing’ style. He was ruthless in punishing priests who deviated from doctrine by advocating changes to Mass or supporting ordination of women.”

Actual evidence of any offense from forty years ago does not exist in the Pell case, but for too many about the business of news and fake news, it need not exist. His Eminence is guilty of “other things”: fidelity to Catholic teaching, a conservative mindset, and an insistence that priests support orthodoxy. This is enough for the Trial by Media to rush to judgment.

Whether it is enough for the people of Australia remains to be seen. I think not. Even after my own experience of justice, I remain open to the hope that the better nature of thoughtful people will prevail. I know many Australians, and they are neither unjust nor “numb” as some in the news media suggest.

Where Are Your Accusers? (John 8:10)

Who are the current accusers in the trial of Cardinal Pell? It strikes me as bizarre that so many in the news media have focused this story only on the wider scandal and Cardinal Pell’s conservative mindset without much inquiry into the rest of the equation. Most in the media have said nothing about Pell’s accusers except to freely identify them as “victims,” and to insinuate that unnamed others contemplate coming forward.

There’s just enough smoke to create the impression of a raging fire Down Under. On June 30, The Media Report, an ever vigilant source of the rest of the sobering story, posted “Now This: The Media’s Cardinal Pell Disinformation Campaign.”

David F. Pierre, Jr. at The Media Report  focused on a sobering fact that most other reports have omitted or downplayed. These accusations are from forty years ago. Much of the news media will not identify the accusers because of politically correct policies to withhold the identities of sexual abuse victims, but these accusers are not children; they are men in their fifties.

They have criminal records of their own. Although that in itself does not discredit their claims, it should be sufficient enough for a closer look.  The Media Report  pointed out (with supportive links) that one of the accusers, Lyndon Monument, is an “admitted drug addict” who served a term in prison for criminal assault stemming from a drug debt. He also previously accused a childhood teacher of sexual abuse.

The other accuser, Damian Dignan, “has a criminal history for assault and drunk driving.” He has a history of alcohol abuse, and also previously accused a childhood teacher of assault. Both men are raising their claims against Cardinal Pell for the first time, forty years later, and only when the climate would lend itself to less scrutiny over financial settlements.

Experience tells me that both the justice system and the news media should be especially cautious in forming judgments in such a case. In 2005, during the height of the priesthood scandal in America, I wrote an article for Catalyst entitled “Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud.”

The article details multiple cases of men with criminal records who concocted schemes to obtain financial settlements through fraudulent claims about Catholic priests. They took advantage of the very climate now smoldering behind the Pell case.

Then there was the story of Shamont Lyle Sapp that I exposed in “Catholic Priests and the Perversions of Predators.” Before he was investigated and exposed by a vigilant U.S. Attorney, Mr. Sapp, from his prison cell, accused several priests in multiple states using details and “evidence” gathered from Internet accounts of other accusations against priests. It was only a fluke that Sapp was investigated and caught in the scam.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

The Media Report  also reminded us that back in 2002, Cardinal Pell was previously accused by a “career criminal” who had been convicted of tax evasion, narcotics charges, illegal gambling operations, and organized crime with “an impressive 39 court convictions under his belt.” He accused Cardinal Pell of abusing him in 1962, but Pell was exonerated and cleared of the charge.

“Cardinal George Pell and Other Martyrs for a Nefarious Cause” raised the specter that claims like these 40-year-old charges are used by some as “weapons of mass destruction” in order to bolster other agendas. At the popular site, Whispers in the Loggia (“For the Cardinal Prefect, ‘My Day in Court’” June 29), Rocco Palmo raised the same “historical” abuse case from the 1960s in which Pell had been cleared, but he attributed its momentum, and its treatment in Rome, to other agendas:

“Two decades of revelations of abuse and cover-up have been treated as a political football among the Church’s ideological camps.”

There is no evidence or reason for treating the current forty-year-old “historical abuse” case as any different. The mere fact that charges were brought in such a case could have a lot more to do with Pell being a target for political factions that are happy to see him in the dock of justice knowing that, regardless of the outcome, Pell is permanently maligned and out of the way.

But among all the toxic press, there are many sounding the alarm that “Trial by Media” in Australia is itself facing trial. In National Review  (“The Persecution of Cardinal George Pell,” June 29, 2017) author George Weigel described the campaign against Pell in Australia as…

“…a thoroughly poisonous public climate exacerbated by poorly sourced but widely disseminated allegations, no respect for elementary fairness, and a curious relationship between elements of the Australian media and the Victoria police…”

George Weigel cited comments from several Australians who have refused to become caught up in the climate of moral panic and nefarious agendas. These voices are worth hearing out. Attorney Robin Speed, President of the Australian Rule of Law Institute warned against prosecutors acting against Pell “in response to the baying of a section of the mob.”

Angela Shanahan in The Australian  summarized the trajectory of the case:

“Conspiracy and rumor reign, logic and fact have gone out the window in the case of Cardinal Pell…. In all this sound and fury, the Cardinal has acted impeccably. He has said nothing except to state his innocence.”

Columnist Peter Craven, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald (June 9) concluded,

“One can only hope to God that in the present climate people will be capable of realizing this is a case being mounted for a witch trial”

Voices of dissent against the blind orthodoxy of victimhood are a minority in Australia just as they are a minority in America. Some of these voices have been courageous in their defense, not only of Cardinal Pell, but of justice as an ideal that is now itself under indictment. Australian political commentator Amanda Vanstone, a former Ambassador to Italy and “no fan of organized religion,” wrote,

“George Pell’s trial by media has to stop. What we are seeing is no better than a lynch mob from the dark ages… The public arena is being used to trash a reputation and probably prevent a fair trial.”

Andrew Halphen, co-chairman of criminal law at the Law Institute of Victoria addressed the leaks to the media about Pell as a startling affront to the legal system. He expressed grave concern over whether Pell could now have a fair trial. He added that he could not think of any other case in which a charge against a public figure “finds its way to the front page of a major news publication before a person is actually charged.”

After I posted “Cardinal George Pell and Other Martyrs for a Nefarious Cause,” a first-time reader in Ballarat, Australia sent a comment that I want to post here because it speaks volumes about the climate in which Cardinal Pell faces trial. It begins with a quote from the above post:

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“‘This nonsense continues because of the clamor of a few and the silence of many.’ Ahh, the irony of your comment. I am a Ballarat resident. My childhood bore witness to the culture of pedophilia that thrived here. And as an adult, the impact of the sexual abuse that happened to so many in my community continues.

“I am appalled by your lack of compassion for victims. Your want to dismiss the validity of these crimes because of the delay in victims coming forward and/or charges laid, and your implied belief that our Australian justice system is flawed.

“Our community knows its truths. The Catholic Church cannot conceal this truth as it once did. Your comments are just “clamor.” Hurtful clamor. Pell and the rest of “your fellow sufferers” [quoted from Cardinal Avery Dulles on TSW’s “About” page] cannot demand the silence of so many impacted because it doesn’t fit your narrative.”

— a resident of Ballarat, Australia

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The defense rests its case. My heart goes out to Australians who have suffered the unspeakable, but the above comment makes the case for me. If what other priests did to other victims is now sufficient “evidence” to indict and convict Cardinal Pell then why have a trial at all? If it is too late to salvage justice from vengeance, then just take the man into the Outback and shoot him.