Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - The Buffalo Catholic Diocese announced Monday its Independent Review Board (IRB) has completed its review of independent investigations into allegations brought against three local priests, including Rev. Joseph Gatto.
The IRB made the determination that any allegation of an inappropriate relationship with a teenager that died in 2017, or anything he may have done to contribute to the teen's death is unsubstantiated. That allows Rev. Gatto to maintain the ability to carry out his priestly ministry.
Rev. Gatto had voluntarily removed himself from active ministry in March of this year after he was the subject of emotional testimony in federal bankruptcy court, where during victim impact statements, Tracy Waring testified that her son, Devin's suicide in 2017 was connected to Gatto.
The IRB assigned Julie Ledwin, a retired detective who previously worked in the Sex Offense Squad of the City of Buffalo Police Department, to conduct a thorough investigation into allegations made by the mother of the teen.
Rev. Gatto had been serving at St. Benedict's parish in Eggertsville, as well as St. Leo's, Christ The King, Ss. Peter & Paul, St. Aloysius Gonzaga, and Infant of Prague.
Nandor Forgach is a longtime parishioner of St. Benedict's parish. He feels his trust in the Buffalo Diocese continues to slowly fizzle with every new development that pops up surrounding the diocese.
"Honestly, at this point, I don't really have a lot of faith within the Diocese of Buffalo itself that they're continuing to do the right thing, the transparent thing, and that this process was done with the full intentions of figuring out the truth," said Forgach in an interview with WBEN. "If it is the truth, then that's great. But I just do not have faith within the Diocese of Buffalo that they are doing that."
He adds he doesn't feel the Diocese's IRB is acting in good faith with their independent investigations, strongly feeling they should release the details surrounding their findings with Rev. Gatto, as well as Rev. Patrick O'Keefe and Rev. Jeffrey Nowak.
"I would like them to do it, I think they should do it. I think they've eroded the trust of the people so much that the only way they can start building up trust is by being fully transparent, and this is where you start," Forgach stated. "It might be uncomfortable, it might be painful, but you've got to do something to regain the trust of the parishioners. Or maybe you don't want to regain the trust of the parishioners and you just want to let the religion die out here. I don't know what their end game is, but it's definitely not renewal of the faith with the way that they're doing everything."
While Forgach knows well there are two sides to every story, he feels there is a level of truth that is being withheld surrounding Rev. Gatto and other facing accusations within the Diocese.
"I think the truth is hidden somewhere within the Diocese of Buffalo of what really happened. And unless an independent legal inquiry goes in and starts getting all the information out there and piecing together the pieces, I don't know if we'll ever really know the truth. And it's a little disheartening," Forgach said.
"I grew up within the Catholic Church, I remain a faithful Catholic. I looked up to a lot of these people that were leading our faith, and it's very disheartening to see people that are taking vows to represent God on Earth to be in such positions, and having such accusations lobbied against them. And seeing that our representation of God on Earth isn't necessarily doing the right thing to punish these people that are having accusations placed against them."
Now with Fr. Gatto allowed to continue his priestly ministry, Forgach would prefer that Gatto didn't return to serve the parishioners at St. Benedict's.
"I think there's just a lot of mistrust. I think it would be better for the school if he was not back at the church," he said. "This is, again, just my personal opinions. And it's unfortunate, because we are facing a shortage of priests, and this is one less priest within our family. But with everything that's going on and with everything that's happened recently, I think it's just time to go our separate ways."
Former priest with the Diocese of Erie, James Faluszczak, goes back quite a ways with Fr. Gatto. Gatto served as Faluszczak's formation director at Christ the King Seminary out in East Aurora back in the 1990s, and Faluszczak admits he admired Gatto during his time at the seminary.
However, it was when Faluszczak was preparing for his deacon ordination in 1995 when he claims Gatto blackmailed him as a retaliation attempt over finding out that Gatto had struck up a relationship with a seminarian.
It was finally in 2018 when Faluszczak was able to come forth with his allegations against Fr. Gatto when it was further reported that Gatto was involved with two other people he was advising spiritually.
Upon hearing the news of Gatto's latest allegations being deemed unsubstantiated by the Diocese's IRB, it was a reaction of wonderment and surprise for Faluszczak.
"The investigator, a retired Buffalo City Police detective, was hired by the Independent Review Board to investigate Joe Gatto, and she reached out to me about a month ago. I told her that I would be willing to [talk] - this took me a minute to think about, because I really don't trust the independence of the review board. They're appointed by the bishop, and sometimes they're employed by the bishop, and this detective certainly was not doing her work for free," Faluszczak said with WBEN. "After an initial conversation with her, I never heard back from her. She reached out to me, because she knew I had written a letter to my own bishop in Erie, Bishop Lawrence Persico, when I left ministry in 2014."
Faluszczak provided Bishop Persico with three allegations against three separate individuals, one of which being Gatto, but he says nothing he provided was ever looked into or investigated further. He then presented his allegations to Pope Francis directly through his surrogates and through the papal nuncio, the Vatican ambassador in Washington D.C., Christophe Pierre, but also never heard back from any of them.
"Today, to hear that that Joe was reinstated without anybody following up with me after they said they were going to follow up with me, the cynic in me would say that that's confirmation of everything that I've experienced up to this point. But I really thought this investigator was going to be different. It turns out she's not."
What frustrates Faluszczak a great deal is no one will likely ever know what was said between Gatto and the teenager that took his own life back in 2017.
"The fact that Gatto wrote this man text messages, saying, 'Pray for me from heaven, please pray for me.' He sent that to that kid after he died. And after that kid died, he went to the mother's house so that he could observe his bedroom, so that he could touch his clothes. Why is it that that's not enough for the Diocese or the Independent Review Board to suspend him? It's because of the seal of confession," Faluszczak said. "That boy went to confession to Gatto; we will never know what was said in that confession. That's the heart of the issue. The Diocese is saying they don't have credible evidence to make the claim that what Gatto said to him in confession led to the boy's suicide. You know why? Because the seal of confession can't be violated by the Diocese, by a civil court, by a criminal court. Whatever was said between those two men at that point, it was enough that Gatto wanted to go smell his clothes. But we'll never know about it."
During a prior appearance with WBEN last month, Faluszczak said he had approached current Bishop Michael Fisher and asked him to release files to the public as part of the Diocese's bankruptcy, like complaints he received from seminarians. However, he said Bishop Fisher's response was that HIPAA laws prohibit him from sharing those files with the public.
"What that means is Joe Gatto in 2018 was sent to the treatment facility outside Toronto named 'Southdown' to evaluate whether or not he had abused these adults that were in his care, that seminarian and the two people that he had in spiritual direction. Fisher is trying to say that's like a hospital file. He has it, he has the evaluation from Southdown in 2018, but he won't share it with the public because of HIPAA laws," Faluszczak explained.
His advice to any plaintiff going forward, though, when looking into such complaints is ask for it in court, as those are discoverable files.
"If Joe was sent for evaluation after this mother talked in federal court, under oath that Joe had an inappropriate relationship with a 17-year-old but they can't talk about it because it was in confession, then I hope the feds I hope this new State Police unit that [Assemblyman] Pat Burke is calling for, that they subpoena whether or not Joe Gatto faced another round of evaluations when this most recent revelation came forward," Faluszczak said. "We can't know what happened in confession, even though multiple states and municipalities in our country and around the world are trying to make priests mandated reporters, even in confession. Right now, we can't know. And the review board can't know. So if Joe just kept his mouth shut and the dead can't speak, we can never know what went on in that confession between the 17-year-old boy and Fr. Joe Gatto."
