STONEHAM (MA)
Stoneham Sun
By Nadine Wandzilak/ Correspondent
Wednesday, May 17, 2006 - Updated: 10:21 AM EST
Cardinal Sean O’Malley will visit Stoneham next Friday, May 26, for a prayer service as part of a "Pilgrimage of repentance and hope: a novena to the Holy Spirit" in nine communities that experienced "an especially painful history of sexual abuse of children by priests."
Paul Shanley, a defrocked Roman Catholic priest in jail after being convicted of indecent assault and battery and rape of a child while he was at a Newton parish in the 1980’s, served at St Patrick’s parish here as his first assignment, Rev. Bill Schmidt of St. Patrick’s said Monday.
O’Malley will speak at the prayer service at St. Patrick’s Church and the local parish will ask the family of a victim of clergy sexual abuse to talk about the years the abuse was held as a secret, Schmidt said. Victims and families share two emotions, Schmidt said: shame and isolation.
"They do not have to be ashamed," he said.
"Cardinal O’Malley, recognizing the abuse of young people that took place at Saint Patrick Parish during the 1960’s, will make Saint Patrick Parish the first parish that he visits as part of the Novena," Schmidt wrote in Sunday’s church bulletin.