Recognition for a 12 Year Protest, The Age, April 5, 2010

Recognition for a 12-Year Protest

The Age
April 5, 2010

http://www.theage.com.au/world/recognition-for-a-12year-protest-20100404-rll3.html

WASHINGTON (DC) -- COME rain, or snow or wind, he is there every day with his banner denouncing the paedophile scandals shaking the Catholic Church.

For 12 years, John Wojnowski has silently protested outside the Vatican embassy in Washington, DC. "The Vatican hides paedophiles," his signs says.

John Wojnowski with his banner.

Since the scandals have resurfaced in recent days, swirling around whether Pope Benedict XVI failed to act, many drivers have honked their horns in support or raised their fists in the air in 67-year-old Mr Wojnowski's direction. Mr Wojnowski, a Pole born in 1943, has a very personal reason for bearing a grudge towards the church. He says he was sexually molested at the age of 15 by the village priest in Cuzzago, in Italy's Piedmont region, where Mr Wojnowski's family settled after World War II.

"He called me to his home under the pretext of teaching me Latin. As soon as I sat down, he started touching my knee and then told me to masturbate," he said.

Mr Wojnowski said he ran away when the priest began undressing. "It was so traumatising. I repressed the memory of that moment, but I ruined my life. My temper changed, my appearance changed. I was avoiding people. I felt so insecure, I never talked to anyone."

In the 1960s, Mr Wojnowski emigrated to Canada, then to the United States, where he became a citizen.

Then in 1997, a scandal in Texas in which a child victim of a paedophile priest committed suicide jolted Mr Wojnowski like electric-shock treatment.

There followed an exchange of letters with the diocese, which informed him that the case was closed, the priest who allegedly molested him having died 10 years earlier.

In April 1998, at age 55, Mr Wojnowski took early retirement and began his protest outside the Vatican embassy.