[Editor’s note: The original version of this column, published in the Asian Journal in March 2016, has been updated to reflect 2019 changes.]
Pope Francis has declared a Jubilee Year of Mercy.
From the Vatican’s website, “The Church is celebrating the Holy Year of Mercy, a time of grace, peace, conversion and joy. It is meant for everyone: people of every age, from far and near. There are no walls or distances which can prevent the Father’s mercy from reaching and embracing us. The Holy Door is now open in Rome and in all the diocese of the world.”
On Sundays and weekday masses, priests talk of mercy in their homilies. The gospel on March 2 was on forgiveness, and how many times a person must forgive — not just seven times, but seven times 77, or 539 times.
March 3rd’s homily spoke of applying one’s knowledge, filtering what we know, and using what we know to spread God’s love and forgiveness. I cried listening to the last homily for I was struggling with how do you forgive and show mercy to predator priests, after watching “Spotlight,” not for myself but for numerous folks who have been abused in their teenage years.
I once had a chance to meet one of these predator priests, as part of a dinner, raising awareness and funds to help urban poor communities in the Philippines, which includes a chapel, a child care center, a school, and a pharmacy.
When I invited him to join Simbang Gabi in an East Hollywood Church, he demurred and said he was “persona non grata.” It struck me as weird, as it was a self-detrimental conclusion, not borne out of practice.
While researching, his name was listed on Bishop-Accountability.org. His victim, now in her 60s, was paid $100,000 by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles (perhaps the reason for “persona non grata”) as this Catholic Irish priest had sex with a 15-year-old debate team member at the school he served as principal. He wrote an apology letter and described it as “consensual sex” decades later.
If you were the victim, would you be able to forgive this priest, and show him God’s mercy?
After a full declaration of wrongdoing and witnessing the perpetrator’s remorse, can you now be part of a healthier Catholic Church, forgiving more than 539 times?
Can you still forgive and ask for God’s mercy knowing that it was not just you, but you are part of a much bigger sector of thousands in 108 cities in the United States and 51 cities in 21 countries?
What if you discover that this pattern of conduct has reached back to two centuries before?
Would you now use your persuasive powers to prevent the “acting out of these psychosocially and emotionally immature priests?”
Will we ever have accountability to these breached sacred trusts, committed by priests? Will we have accountability from bishops and cardinals who hid these harmful behaviors, robbing minors of their dignities, sense of peace, emotional security and freedom from harm, with their trauma lasting for decades?
Spotlight’s revelations
During the 88th Academy Awards, “Spotlight” won the Oscar for Best Picture for 2016. It also got Best Original Screenplay, written by Tom McCarthy.
The film is about Marty Baron, a new editor of the Boston Globe, who assigned the Spotlight team of four investigative journalists (Michael Rezendes, Matt Carroll, Sacha Pfeiffer and Water “Robby” Robinson) to look into John Geoghan, a priest whose title had been removed, a.k.a defrocked, after molesting more than 80 boys.
The reporters made it their collective mission to provide proof of the cover-up, uncovering the pattern, policy and practices, which systematically hid the wrongdoings in the Boston archdiocese, headed by Cardinal Edward Law.
One dialogue line in the film resonated well: “If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one.”
The Spotlight team went through a painstaking process of digging facts, interviewing victims, lawyers, fact-checking, including a process of deduction, which led to a compiled list of 87 priests, from the church’s directory of priests, who were classified “on sick leave, unassigned or emergency status.”
Speaking of priests on sick leave, I interviewed a healing priest who led two churches in the Valley, years ago. After a three-hour interview, he gave me a “spooky feeling,” particularly upon observing how he gave chest-suffocating hugs to women, normally reserved for couples who have not seen each other for a long time. My heart told me to stay away, while my mind decided not to write his story.
Fast forward to today, he is no longer a pastor and is shuffling papers in the Archdiocese. His blogs, which spoke of his healing abilities, have disappeared from the Internet.
Back to “Spotlight,” the film showed how a list of 87 priests came about, who were either on sick leave, unassigned, on emergency status or were transferred in less than three years. The list was verified by the Archdiocese’s defense counsel, and another reliable third-party source, a lawyer who settled cases on behalf of 45 accused priests. The film showed how verification was arrived at, using two independent sources.
Included in the process of investigation was filing a motion to unseal court documents from John Geoghan’s case (a priest who molested 80 boys, including seven boys in one family), while also interviewing victims and accused priests.
The start of transparency, perhaps?
In the film, we heard the voice of Richard Sipe, an 82-year-old psychiatrist who is now married after previously serving as a Benedictine monk and former Catholic priest. He shared his conclusion that only 50 percent of the priests are celibate, leading to a culture of secrecy and hiding pedophilia.
One would expect the Holy See perhaps to keep folks from seeing the film; instead, the Vatican Radio, official radio service of the Holy See, was quoted as saying, it will help the U.S. Catholic Church “to accept fully the sin, to admit it publicly and to pay all the consequences.”
End-film credits showed 600 stories written by the Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team in 2002, about 249 accused priests and brothers and over 1,000 survivors.
As to Sipe, who headed the Department of Family Services at Seton Psychiatric Institute from 1967 to 1970, his research findings concluded: “1,300 priests and religious have been treated for psychosexual disorders in 25 years, at the cost of over $50 million.” The Seton Institute has been closed since 1972.
Will the Catholic Church be able to purge its internal demons, its sins of sexual abuse with minors? Recently, Pope Francis headed a four-day summit involving the hierarchy of bishops and cardinals focused on the protection of minors and a rehabilitation movement away from sexual abuse. He described the priests doing this as extensions of evil and Satan’s evildoers.
Will the summit of 2019 stop the Church’s pervasive practices of reassigning accused priests to different parishes, managing settlements in secrecy and sending them for psychiatric treatment, “they are our priests, so it is our problem to cure them?”
Can the Church perhaps lead “institutional confession” to their flock, regionally, and to all their parishioners around the world, recognizing their psychosocial problem happened in 51 cities in 21 countries and 108 cities of the United States (as “Spotlight” revealed)?
When I wrote that question, the summit of 2019 has not been convened. We now find Pope Francis leading the public confession for this worldwide problem of sexual abuse. How did the Catholic Church become this secretive institution hiding these human behavioral problems?
Certainly, the Vatican knows how Archdiocesan reserves have been affected: the sale of a Mid-Wilshire high-rise building in Los Angeles, the sale of an all-boys high school in Hancock Park (now a Jewish School) and even the bankruptcy filing of Diocese of San Diego to pay for these settlements.
Will this institution, who “thinks in centuries,” consider a more comprehensive treatment of the problem?
Or will these ghastly secrets die with them, much like the late Archbishop Robert Sanchez, who while in New Mexico had sex with teenage girls for decades, which was subsequently exposed on 60 Minutes in 1993?
The New York Times described how Archbishop Sanchez apologized to the Native Americans for “grievances reaching back to the days of colonization” and created an Office of Native American Ministry. The publication detailed that, “In a report to the World Synod of Bishops in Rome in 1980, Archbishop Sanchez called for renewed efforts to eliminate ‘all forms of racism’ in the church. ‘Although great numbers of a particular ethnic or language group may be present in a parish,’ he wrote in the report, ‘often little or no effort is made by the local parish priest to welcome these newcomers into the parish family.’”
Mercy can be embodied
“What is the name of God, “ a priest asked in his homily? To which worshippers answered, “Mercy.”
It is imploring God not to judge us but instead, to be forgiven for all our sins and to be cleansed from them.
As Holy Week begins, would it be reasonable to expect the Vatican to do a more rigorous institutional review of its practices in disaffirming these life-harming activities?
Instead of focusing the Church’s attention and offering prayers for the wombs of women (which are attached to women’s bodies to control, while exercising their endowed, God-given free will to guide them), would it not be merciful for victims who have been harmed by defrocked priests and others still active in their ministries to be monitored in their healing process? Also, might the Church also come to terms on how nuns were defiled as comfort women, some of whom were kept as sex slaves?
In the light of mercy, must we not seek to remove errant priests, from the milieu of children, whom they can harm again? And seek improved emotional maturation and human formation for these priests?
“Spotlight” uncovered a systemic pattern and administrative policy of secrecy, necessitating that the Vatican demonstrates, as well, an effective and systematic pattern of dismantling criminal wrongdoings, done under the cloak of respectability and garbed in priestly vestments, aside from the VIRTUS training given to lay volunteers. The hierarchy must, in fact, train seminarians and priests that these behaviors are predatory crimes against man-made law, punishable by jail sentences.
In the form of spreading God’s good news, now I understand why a Caucasian priest said at a Lenten retreat, “Had it not been for the Filipino clergy and its laity, the Catholic Church in America would have perished.” These immigrant Filipino and Filipino-American priests became the guardians of faith and anchored the laity, deeply on values of pakikisama and seeing God in others, with a deeper intimacy with God through Mama Mary.
After this 2019 summit, I pray that the Catholic Church moves away from secrecy, which made these crimes more predatory and into the justice measures they deserved. May these predatory priests meet justice in their lifetimes and may the lingering victims who have not received justice be rehabilitated in their lifetimes as well and lastly, may the seminaries that form these priests do their jobs of fuller human formations and much more scrutiny in transitioning these young men from deacons to priests.
This upcoming Holy Week, all of us have the duty to make sure our Catholic Church returns to being animated by the Holy Spirit and may we become truth seekers and truth tellers when we see predatory and abusive behaviors from the Lord’s stewards who were formed to take care of the sheep and not abuse them!
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Prosy Abarquez-Delacruz, J.D. writes a weekly column for Asian Journal, called “Rhizomes.” She has been writing for AJ Press for 10 years. She also contributes to Balikbayan Magazine. Her training and experiences are in science, food technology, law and community volunteerism for 4 decades. She holds a B.S. degree from the University of the Philippines, a law degree from Whittier College School of Law in California and a certificate on 21st Century Leadership from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She has been a participant in NVM Writing Workshops taught by Prof. Peter Bacho for 4 years and Prof. Russell Leong. She has travelled to France, Holland, Belgium, Japan, Costa Rica, Mexico and over 22 national parks in the US, in her pursuit of love for nature and the arts.
