By Rosie DiManno
Toronto Star
October 19, 2010
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/877475--dimanno-outback-nun-patron-saint-to-sexually-abused
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| This handout file picture taken in the 1880's and released by The Trustees of the Sisters of St Joseph shows Mary MacKillop, an Australian nun revered for her work with needy children as much as for her rebellious streak. |
There is no small irony in the Roman Catholic Church having a patron saint for sexually abused children.
Whether St. Dymphna ever actually existed or is merely a mythological figure is up for debate. It’s unclear — to me anyway — whether this alleged 7th century personage even remains on the Church’s official saint calendar, though she has a feast day (May 15), a shrine in Ohio, and is venerated in the Irish village where she’s said to have been born.
As the story goes, Dymphna’s pagan chieftain father lusted after his daughter and pursued the poor girl after she fled to Belgium. Tracked down and still refusing to give herself to dad, carnally, Dymphna was beheaded.
Her patronage realm covers sexual abuse, incest, rape and “nervous afflictions” including anorexia and depression.
However, if the patron position for sex abuse is still open, or the Church would like to give that job to a candidate whose very real existence has been extensively documented, it need look no further than St. Mary MacKillop, the Australian nun canonized here on Sunday.
She is the first Aussie saint ever and the thousands who came up from Down Under to witness her formal canonization at St. Peter’s Square couldn’t help themselves — cheering “Oi! Oi! Oi!” when Pope Benedict XVI mentioned Mary’s name. The “Outback Nun” has had a pop song released in her honour, her own Facebook page and Twitter account, though 101 years dead.
Naturally, the pontiff made no mention of Mary’s dirty priest “whistleblower” reputation when investing the beloved nun with sainthood, emphasizing instead her “saintly example of zeal, perseverance and prayer” along with the many challenges the Church obliquely admits she faced.
For starters, Mary was excommunicated by her own bishop — making her among the very few who have gone from one-time outcast to halo.
Thumbnail bio: Mary, the daughter of Scottish immigrants, founded the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart in Adelaide in 1867, specifically to help Australia’s poor and neglected Catholics and to educate their children.
Strong-willed, she clashed often with the Church’s male hierarchy, most notably over her insistence on maintaining direct authority over the 60 sisters in her order — free to assign them as she thought best, to schools and orphanages and women’s refuges — rather than put them at the bishop’s disposal.
In 1871, Mary was excommunicated for supposed disobedience, the harshest punishment available to the Church, an extraordinary move against the founder of a religious order, meaning she was denied sacraments.
Five months later, on his deathbed, the bishop rescinded his excommunication. Yet in 1985, more internal politics saw Mary deposed as Mother General. Not until 14 years later were the Josephite sisters allowed to elect her back into that position.
Over the last year, as Australians prepared for Mary’s canonization, the national media did excellent investigative work sifting through church documents to determine why this admittedly maverick nun got into so much trouble with her purple mitre-clad bosses.
The evidence is overwhelming: Mary had uncovered a case of sexual abuse by a parish priest and, along with her Josephite sorority, demanded the bishop take disciplinary action. The bishop did, in fact, remove that cleric. But his second-in-command — apparently outraged by the humiliation this caused and nursing a grudge against Mary — used his influence with the bishop to have her ejected from the Church.
This is now the widely accepted version of events. A documentary about Mary MacKillop was recently televised in Australia wherein her former postulator — the person who makes the case for canonization — saying: “Priests being annoyed that somebody had uncovered it — that would probably be the way of describing it — and being so angry that the destruction of the Josephites was decided on.”
A statement from the Sisters of St. Joseph confirmed that the documentary’s reports were “consistent with” studies of the event.
In Australia, victims of sex abuse are already praying to Mary as their patron saint, whether the Vatican makes it so or not. Traditionally, a patron saint is the one who prays for petitioners in heaven, with some element of their personal life on Earth making them particularly relevant to the faithful, their go-to saint.
It has been a bad year for the Church, deluged with reports emerging — both alleged and proven — of sexual abuse by clergy in recent decades, especially in Germany, Ireland and the U.S.; offenders simply moved to a different diocese; and huge payments made to guarantee silence from victims. The misconduct reaches right down into Benedict’s own diocese from bishop days. Further, he was the Vatican’s disciplinarian-in-chief before becoming Pope.
Benedict, under pressure, apologized for what he called “sin inside the church.” While offenders may only account for a tiny percentage of priests and brothers, the Vatican’s mishandling of this rot has brought the Church into even more disrepute.
Children have been harmed, betrayed and scarred for life, the Church bringing the full weight of its institutional authority to keep victims and their families quiet, with untold millions spent on buying non-disclosure agreements.
In Canada, the Congregation of the Holy Cross — whence came Brother Andre, canonized along with Mary MacKillop on the weekend — is also embroiled in scandal, under police investigation for allegations of sexual abuse and a cover-up at Montreal’s private College Notre Dame dating back to the 1960s and 70s.
“We’re dealing with it,” Father Claude Grou, rector of St. Joseph’s Oratory and Rome-based superior general of the congregation from 1986 to 1998 told the Star recently.
“It is being studied by lawyers for the diocese.
“We have to be humble enough to accept that mistakes have been made. Yes, things could have been done better. But I think we need to recognize that good and bad exist in religious orders and in the Church.”
Like Brother Andre, Mary MacKillop was always on the side of the angels.
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