(Note: Video Contains Disturbing Images)

For more than a year, speculation, rumors and mystery surrounded the former leader of the Gallup Catholic Diocese, Bishop Donald Pelotte.

Last July, the bishop sustained multiple injuries in his home.

Pelotte said he fell down a flight of stairs.

A Gallup police officer called to the hospital took pictures of the battered and bruised bishop. The pictures have recently been publicly released.

Action 7 News asked Dr. Thomas Bennett, an associate state medical examiner and forensic pathologist from Montana, if the bishop's injuries could have been caused by a fall down the stairs.

Bennett said, "Sure they are, in that he's got impact on the checks, on the bridge of his nose, over his shoulder, over the backs of his hands and knuckles, and even down around his knees and his chins."

Because the bishop is in his 60s, Bennett said he would have a harder time recovering from his injuries.

He said the injuries are more consistent with someone who stumbled and fell several times, but said he cannot rule out the bishop being beaten by someone else.

It has to do with the bruises on the bishop's knuckles on both hands.

Bennett said the bishop may have been using his hands to defend himself.

Several months after the injuries, the bishop made a bizzare call to 911.

A dispatch log from September details Gallup police were called to the bishop's home after he told operators "gentle little people about three to four feet tall wearing Halloween masks" were in his home.

In April, Pope Benedict XVI accepted the bishop's resignation.

A statement from the Gallup Catholic Diocese said "the publication of the bishop's photos, taken without his consent while he lay in the hospital as a private citizen and medical patient add unnecessary stress not only to the bishop but to the people who loved him as their spiritual father. "

The statement goes on to say the Diocese is not covering up, as some have alluded to, any information pertaining to the cause or nature of Bishop Pelotte's injuries.

The bishop has been living in Florida.

The Diocese said he plans to return to New Mexico in August to continue his ministry to the Native American and Catholic people.