CALIFORNIA
The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing
Virginia Jones
Below is a quote from an article, The Roots of Pastoral Response by Paul Fericano, published in the Santa Barbara Independent from February 5, 2014. This quote tells about one of the important things we accomplished at Ascension Catholic Church in Portland, Oregon — for seven years we have published in the parish weekly bulletin sources of support for survivors that included the names and contact information for two independent organizations with clergy abuse survivors as founders — SafeNet and Compassionate Gathering. (Please note that the co-founder of Compassionate Gathering is Elizabeth Goeke, who is a clinical counselor and former nun. She left her order after being assaulted by a priest. Elizabeth suffered a detached retina and had some grandchildren who needed full time care so she is now retired.)
Only one (Ascension Parish in Portland) has printed a weekly notice continuously (for both the OPO and SafeNet) since 2007. (During this period, and as a result of this one parish’s pastoral response, SafeNet has received nearly two dozen inquiries from survivors and family members living in the Pacific Northwest.)
I don’t have Paul’s permission to link the article so I can’t link it but I can tell you where to find it:
You can cut and paste in your browser or go to the website of The Santa Barbara Independent and look up Paul Fericano and the article.
What we have been doing at Ascension since the Fall of 2005, not merely since 2007, is what needs to take place at every Catholic Church.
Paul Fericano helped us get started on the work although I can’t really say anything more about him as I don’t have his permission, but I don’t feel OK if I don’t give credit where credit is due. Paul deserves lots of credit as my work would have been impossible without his help. I could not have done what I did without his help or the help of others — namely Fr. Armando Lopez. Still Fr. Armando Lopez would not have done what he did in terms of ordering announcements in the parish bulletin that included the names and contact information of two clergy abuse survivors — Paul and Elizabeth Goeke — every week for 7 years without me and other parishioners (Jim, Helen, Mary Lou and Fran) requesting that he do so. Fr. Armando also placed the name of an abusive predecessor — Gus Krumm — and invited survivors to come forward and advertised my Compassionate Gatherings to bring together survivors with other Catholics for listening, healing and reconciliation. Once again he did this at my request as well as Helen’s and Jim’s and with the tacit support of Mary Lou and Fran. No, we did not bring together abusers and victims together, just survivors and other Catholics. I have been involved with citizen diplomacy since the 1980s and thought that the best way to help Catholics understand the issue of clergy abuse was to have them hear the stories of survivors in person. It is much harder to dismiss a person to their face than it is to dismiss a newspaper article. And it works to produce lots of understanding and healing.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.