PITTSBURGH (PA)
The New York Times
August 15, 2018
By Campbell Robertson and Sharon Otterman
John Cabon stood quietly and crossed himself before a statue of the Virgin Mary outside St. Paul’s, the mother church of the Pittsburgh Diocese.
“I keep the faith” said Mr. Cabon, 64, on the way to noon Mass. His sister, he said, had left the faith when explosive revelations of sexual abuse rocked the Roman Catholic Church in 2002. He had refused. “You don’t really believe everything, you know.”
But inside the church, there was no escaping the abuse scandal, which has entered a new chapter after monstrous revelations were released in a grand jury report on Tuesday, describing the abuse of more than 1,000 young people at the hands of hundreds of priests in Pennsylvania.
The priest at St Paul’s spoke of “horrendous and evil acts,” “moral failure” by church leaders, and the “grief, sadness, feelings of betrayal, even anger” that followed. One woman wept silently in her pew.
In Pittsburgh — site of some of the most ghastly acts in the report — and in dioceses around the country, Catholics grappled with the report’s findings.
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