Gerald Renner, a religion reporter for the Hartford Courant who helped expose allegations of sexual abuse by the founder of a Connecticut Catholic Religious Order, the Legionaries of Christ, died yesterday in Norwalk Hospital. He was 75.

After allegations by many seminarians appeared in Renner’s book “Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II” (2004, co-written by Jason Berry), the order’s founder, Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, was forced by Pope Benedict XVI to relinquish his public ministry. The Pope ordered the priest to devote himself to “prayer and penitence.” A reporter who got his start covering organized crime for the Reading, Pa., Eagle, Renner did public relations work for the National Council of Bishops before becoming editor of the Religion News Service in New York, in 1976.

“Vow of Silence” was the culmination of several years of reporting on Rev. Maciel and the Legionaries, who had been great favorites of Pope John Paul II, despite repeated investigations into abuses. The order claims to have 700 priests and 2,500 seminarians in 20 countries.

At his death, Renner was at work on a book about his career as a religion journalist to be titled, “My Journey Into Apostasy.”