text: No, we actually don't know if anything was "covered up."   If you read the essay, you'd see that what we know about these early women church leaders is directly from Paul's letters.   That is, the letters of Paul's that are in a book we call the Bible.   So what we know about these women and their leadership roles has been in plain sight for nearly 2000 years.   And what is in those letters is still all we know about these early churches and precisely who started them.