WICHITA (KS)
KAKE TV
February 21, 2019
“Upon our meeting lays a burden of pastoral and ecclesial responsibility that compels us to discuss together, in a frank and in-depth way, how to tackle this evil that afflicts the church and humankind at large,” Pope Francis told leaders of the Catholic Church Thursday morning as he opened an International Summit on how to deal with sex abuse scandals rocking the church.
A Wichita activist says she’s happy the pope is recognizing the church has a problem, but now victims want action.
“I call it third degree burns of the soul,” Janet Patterson says about the psychological injuries victims of sexual abuse at the hands of priests have to deal with. “Maybe they can’t see those burns, but they hurt and they hurt constantly.”
Patterson has spent the last nineteen years working with survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. She does it in part, because it’s something she wasn’t able to offer her own son, Eric.
“He had been sexually abused at the age of 12 by his parish priest in the Wichita diocese,” she said.
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