WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service
May 7, 2019
By Rhina Guidos
During the last days of April, a section of the student hub on the campus of The Catholic University of America in Washington displayed a gallery of tales of pain but also of recovery and healing featuring Catholics from around the country who had experienced sex abuse by clergy. They were men and women, younger and older, of various ethnicities — profiles of Catholics who had survived torment by trusted members of the church but who also were helped to recover by Catholic communities of faith.
On May 1, just behind the walls where the tales of abuse and healing were on display, a small group of Catholics just like the ones in the stories gathered with bishops, clergy, victim advocates and others for a daylong event on the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, but also to acknowledge the pain caused, to offer comfort, express sorrow, to share a meal, to pray and extend the wish to heal a broken trust.
“To see the bishops up on a platform with survivors having a discussion in front other people … my hope is that it was the beginning of a lot more conversation between leadership and survivors,” said Kathleen Chastain, a victim services coordinator from the Office of Child and Youth Protection for the Diocese of Kansas City in a May 2 interview with Catholic News Service.
Though the bishops gathered had heard the testimony of the two survivors before — at their annual meeting in November in Baltimore — the May gathering placed them together on a stage to dialogue, a back and forth of questions and answers, a sharing of experiences, which occasionally included an outpouring of painful memories during an event titled “Pushing back against the darkness,” an effort that came about with coordination by Catholic University, members of the survivor group Spirit Fire, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
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