Buffalo Diocese Under Federal Investigation

Faluszczak, who had also been molested by a priest in his teens, went on to study for the priesthood with the diocese of Erie but attended Buffalo's CKS. It was there that he told then-Vice Rector Fr. Gatto of his own unwanted same-sex attraction. Because Gatto seemed supportive, Faluszczak says he told another seminarian friend, who also struggled with homosexual tendencies, to confide in Gatto. That turned out to be a mistake as his friend reported back to him that he and Gatto engaged in homosexual relations.

"So when my friend told me that he was struggling in his sexuality and confided to me the nature of that, I encouraged him to go see Fr. Gatto," said Faluszczak.

His friend later told Faluszczak that he and Gatto had sex.

"I was horrified when my friend came back … [and] he proceeded to tell me that they had had sex together in Father Gatto's room in the dormitory, in the chaplain's quarters of the dorm at Christ the King," he said.

Gatto later used his authority to threaten Faluszczak into silence on a trip to Rome when he was close to ordination.

"Gatto takes me into his room [and] he said, 'I think we need to revisit the issue of whether or not you're ready to be ordained.' I was working on my ordination plans at this point. ... I was getting ready to finish a six-year seminary career and all of a sudden he's saying I think we need to revisit what happened to you in your first year here. I took it absolutely as a threat."

Faluszczak kept quiet about Gatto's homosexual predation of his fellow seminarians and went on to be ordained a priest for Erie. But when Gatto was made rector of CKS, he said it finally moved him to leave the priesthood in 2014 to fight clerical sex abuse full time.

"When Father Gatto became the rector of Christ the King Seminary," he said, "the hypocrisy of that was part of the motivation for me to leave active priestly ministry."

This account is but a part of the sworn testimony given by Faluszczak under oath to during Pennsylvania's grand jury investigation.

"My experience among the Catholic clergy, both in Buffalo and in Erie, is that they are over-sexualized, highly sexualized," he said.

And he is not alone. Beverly Malona, who was on the faculty of CKS in the 1980s and 1990s, said, "It was a hotbed of sexual activity."

She added, "These boys were told that celibacy simply means not marrying a woman. [They were told] this doesn't violate our celibacy if we touch each other, have sex with one another. And that's part of the grooming, and how you get a 13-year-old very confused."

Gatto, now the president-rector of CKS, has suddenly stepped aside amid allegations of homosexual assault. Allegations have surfaced that Gatto was homosexually grooming a young man during a counseling session. The man, Marty Lougen, has recently filed a complaint that Gatto made unwanted sexual advances towards him.

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