Survivors of clergy abuse raise voice prior to Synod

By Virginia Saldanha

Rome. Sept 30, 2023: A group of ten survivors and advocates of the global organization Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA) arrived in Rome several days ahead of the start of the Synod on Synodality to undertake a pilgrimage carrying a cross with the words “Zero Tolerance” emblazoned across it.

They distributed leaflets along the route to create awareness among people along the way, about their demand to Pope Francis to implement the Zero Tolerance to clergy sex abuse that he promised. They walked 125 km from Montefiascone to Rome.

Leona Huggins, a survivor of childhood abuse from Canada, joined the pilgrimage together with her son who volunteered to carry the cross. Leona said, ‘I should not be carrying the cross of sexual abuse, nor should my son; the the cross is not ours to carry, but we continue to do so because the Church continues to ignore us in our pursuit for justice.”

On September 27, they were joined in Rome by 20 other members of ECA, consisting of survivors, lawyers and activist advocates from all continents.

This gathering of ECA in Rome in 2023, is focused on three main goals:

1. For clergy abuse to be a topic of discussion at the forthcoming Synod on Synodality
2. Adopt the 2014 Committee on the Rights of the Child recommendations to end clergy sexual abuse and provide justice for survivors
3. Implement Zero Tolerance of sex abuse in the Church immediately

Clergy sexual abuse is the single issue that has caused the Church to lose its credibility across the world, especially in Latin America, the US, Canada, Europe and Australia.

Theologians who gathered in Leipzig, Germany, a week earlier for a symposium titled “God’s Strong Daughters,” September 8 and 19, to discuss reforms hoped for in the forthcoming Synod, pointed out that since clergy sexual abuse is systemic in the Catholic Church, we cannot talk about synodality unless the structures that have enabled the abuse are identified and accordingly changed.

The Church needs to be held accountable and seen to be compliant with the international standards of human rights especially the rights of children and women, asserts the ECA survivors.

Sadly, the Synod has not created a space to listen to the voices of survivors at the Synod. Which raises the question “Whose voices are being heard?”

Victims/survivors of abuse, present from different parts of the world were given an opportunity to share their stories at the 2023 Assembly of ECA. These included a priest, a former nun, 2 LGBtQI+ persons, and two young women each from Latin America and Africa.

From their stories it Is evident that the definition of ‘vulnerability’ applicable to victims by Pope Francis in his 2019 Motu Proprio needs to go far beyond. The stories demonstrated that vulnerability comprises of multiple categories of intersectionality like poverty, ethnicity, power difference, gender, social and spiritual status, besides age and disability which need to be recognized.

The difference in power relations was identified as the single reason why clergy find it so easy to abuse persons under their power.

The stories were heart rending. Even after decades of abuse the victims could not relate their story without shedding tears which exposed the deep lingering pain of the abuse has left on the survivors.

“Ours are not just stories, our stories tell the tragedy of our lives. I felt humiliated when I was not listened to. It made me feel like I was dead. My abuser was a powerful person in the Church and my family took an active part in the Church so they refused to believe me,” related one middle-aged man.

He is greatly disturbed by the fact that he was manipulated by the priest to bring other boys to the priest to abuse. The guilt remains to haunt him to this day. It was not just one priest there were many others he said.

While the Church did nothing, the state charged his abuser and found him guilty. When they went to arrest the priest, he shot and killed himself. He ended saying, “I do not feel I or the others abused with me got justice.”

One Queer victim said he cannot separate the Church from colonialism, “I am a non-white, queer person. I was thrown out of the home at the age of 13 and sent to a correctional school where my abuser was the spiritual advisor.”

Survivors and advocates from Argentina are disturbed by the fact that Pope Francis has recently appointed and elevated Argentine prelate Victor Manuel Frenandez to head the dicastery of Doctrine of Faith. “Fernandez failed to address cases of abuse in his own diocese how will he address the cases of abuse of the entire Church,” they ask.

A former woman religious from the indigenous Chiapas region in Mexico collected stories of several sisters from her region who joined a diocesan congregation and were abused by their spiritual director.

She brought the files to Rome hoping to hand them in to the Dicastery of the Bishops since their bishop seemed to have blocked their quest for justice. The narration of her experience with the staff at the dicastery office exposes the red tape in the institution that frustrates survivors in their pursuit for justice.

A young woman from Uganda said, “For a survivor of abuse to even accuse a priest of abuse in my country is considered a blasphemy by the community.” She said she felt encouraged to hear that the issue is being taken up by survivors and advocates in different parts of the world.

Thanks to the efforts of Sara Oveido from Chile, the voices of victims/survivors have reached the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva and New York. The group is resolved to continue to work with the UN Human Rights Commission as well as with the Church not just to obtain justice for survivors, but to prevent abuse and thus protect future generations of vulnerable people.

The founder members of ECA carried forward the vision of the late Barbara Blaine, former survivor of abuse, who I was privileged to meet in the US in 2015 shortly before her sudden passing.