UNCLE TED’S LINEAGE

Yesterday, on the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington announced that the Pope had appointed Michael A. Saporito, an Auxiliary Bishop of Newark, as Bishop of Metuchen. The news takes up just a few lines in the Press Office Bulletin, and indeed that is all it merits if viewed merely as an act of routine administration. Yet anyone familiar with the history of the Church in the United States — a history I experienced firsthand over five years as the Papal Representative — knows that those few lines contain an entire agenda.

The Breeding Ground

Metuchen is no ordinary diocese. It was the first episcopal see of Theodore McCarrick, who led it from 1981 to 1986 before moving to Newark and then to Washington, leaving behind a trail of abused seminarians, hush-money settlements, and dismissed complaints. It was precisely in Metuchen and Newark that the events I exposed in 2018 took place, events of which the Holy See had been aware since the pontificate of John Paul II.

Now, Michael A. Saporito has been appointed to that see. He is a priest ordained by McCarrick in 1992, whom McCarrick selected in 1999 as deputy director of the vocations office (the very office, it should be noted, that selects young men for the seminary, even as “Uncle Ted” was inviting them to his beach house), and who has worn the miter since 2020 by the will of Bergoglio and through the hands of Cardinal Tobin. This is no mere biographical detail; it is a matter of spiritual lineage. McCarrick brought Saporito into the priesthood and promoted him; McCarrick’s heir, Tobin, ordained him a bishop and appointed him Auxiliary Bishop of Newark. Today, Prevost is installing him in the See of Metuchen, the very seat once held by McCarrick. «By their fruits you shall know them.»

I’m not saying that Saporito is guilty of the sins of his master: I don’t know, and that’s not the point.

I am saying that a Pontiff who really cared about the purification of the Church — the purification that Bergoglio proclaimed in words and sabotaged in deeds — would never have chosen, for the diocese of McCarrick, a man trained in McCarrick’s school. But who would do such a thing? One who intends to ensure continuity for McCarrick’s network. And Prevost, who was Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and knows every file, and who is moreover an American from Chicago, obviously has direct and long-standing knowledge of all those events. He cannot plead ignorance.

His track record

But there is more, and the article published by LifeSiteNews documents it with a sober presentation of the facts. As pastor in Maplewood, Saporito founded a group for “homosexual Catholics” called Open Arms and entrusted the direction of sacred music to a director who had publicly declared he was in a relationship with a man. After Saporito’s departure, the parish hosted “Pride Masses” and “Rainbow Rosaries,” and no one has ever denied that the seeds for this had been sown earlier. Since 2023, Saporito has participated in private sessions organized for bishops by “New Ways Ministry” — an organization condemned by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and disavowed by the U.S. bishops due to its dissent from Catholic moral teaching — focusing on LGBTQ and gender issues; he even requested that his name be made public, stating that he was “enriched” by those meetings.

A bishop who describes himself as “enriched” by the teaching of those who deny that the sodomitical act is an abomination crying out to heaven for vengeance. Not “disturbed,” not “saddened,” not “concerned for souls”: rather, enriched. This is the lexicon of the synodal church, in which error is not refuted but listened to; and those who listen to it emerge, not admonished, but enriched. If a bishop can claim to be enriched by “New Ways Ministry,” what remains of his role as guardian of the flock? What will Saporito say to the young people of his diocese who — just as he once did — are considering entering the seminary?

And the method is always the same: they do not directly change doctrine, yet in practice they impose a subverted version of it. Leo does not explicitly abrogate the Catechism, but regards it as an outdated ideal, allowing what cannot be openly written in documents to come about in reality. That is why I call Leo the continuator of Francis: Bergoglio set processes in motion, and Prevost is institutionalizing them.

The system

Saporito’s appointment must be viewed alongside the appointment, just a few months ago, of another priest from the McCarrick camp as Archbishop of New Orleans, James F. Checchio (formerly rector of the North American College and later Bishop of Metuchen). It must also be linked to the “Lute case” (Father Eleuterio Vásquez) in Chiclayo; to Leo’s personal secretary, Edgard Iván Rimaycuna, who grew up within Father Lute’s circle; and to the Apostolic Nuncio to Italy, Edgard Peña Parra, who faces accusations I first exposed back in 2002. The picture that emerges is strikingly consistent. In the Conciliar-Synodal Church, closeness to certain circles and the practice of certain vices are not obstacles to a career, they are prerequisites for it. Those with skeletons in their closets are open to blackmail; those open to blackmail are easily manipulated; and those who can be controlled get promoted. Moral corruption and sodomy are the glue that holds it all together.

If the Pope truly wished to cleanse the Church, he would have to open the archives, publish the names of those who knew and remained silent, condemn the guilty, compensate the victims, and appoint bishops from outside that lineage. The famous 2020 McCarrick Report, which was touted as an act of transparency, served instead to exonerate Bergoglio and his accomplices, and to strike at me, the man who had exposed that vast network of corruption. It is no coincidence that I have been excommunicated and declared a schismatic, while “Uncle Ted’s nephews” are offered episcopal sees and prominent Curial posts.