WISCONSIN
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
John Pilmaier’s dad, the roof over our heads as survivors, died Sunday; let’s keep his seat for him at the hearing tomorrow
Most of you know John Pilmaier III, SNAP’s Wisconsin director and a corporate officer of the Survivors and Clergy Leadership Alliance (SCLA). John’s dad, John Jr., died this Sunday of cancer, at home, surrounded by his family. There will be an empty seat, in other words, at the archdiocesan bankruptcy hearing tomorrow, Wednesday, that John Jr. most certainly would have attended if fate would have allowed him to get there. Let’s remember him at the hearing tomorrow as we stand with our fellow survivors as John always stood with his son and with us: 11:00 a.m., Milwaukee Federal Courthouse, Judge Susan V. Kelley courtroom, first floor. You can email John III at pilmaier@milwaukeepc.com and his mom Lynn at lynpilmaier@yahoo.com. I know they would appreciate hearing from us. John’s obituary can be found here and where you can make donations in his memory.
One of my most endearing memories of John Jr. was during an historic day in Rome when his son and I, along with Barbara Blaine and Barbara Dorris, were conducting what would become something of an historic press conference for survivors outside of St. Peter’s Square. Simultaneously with the publication on the front page of the New York Times, we were there discussing the infamous Fr. Lawrence Murphy case, and releasing hundreds of pages of secret church documents from St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee detailing the cover up by the church of the sexual assault of 200 deaf children by Murphy over several decades. Those documents directly implicated for the first time the Vatican and the Pope in child sex crimes by pedophile priests. We were detained by Rome police after the event, who carried us, press in tow, inside a phalanx of police cars, sirens blasting, creating this truly surreal motor cade through the center of the city, and providing the breaking news scrolling across cable stations around the globe. At one point in this whirlwind, as I was preparing for a live interview in the BBC press room in Rome, I glanced up to look at one of the monitors, and there before me in all his glory, with signature mustache, was John III’s dad. He and his wife Lynn were on a live feed from Milwaukee outside archdiocesan headquarters. With them were deaf and other Milwaukee survivors and family members, readying for remarks. ABC World News used Lynn’s words as their headline story (you can see a clip here). That’s John standing next to Lynn. He was the pillar we could all fall back on, literally or figuratively, if we found ourselves, as is impossible not to when speaking of these crimes, shaking with sorrow or anger.
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