New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Healing Mass speaks to abuse survivors
DANBURY — It may have looked like an ordinary Mass, if not for the bishop of the Bridgeport diocese sitting to the right of the altar with a half dozen clergy, all vested in purple.
But when a woman appeared at the lectern, and instead of making liturgical announcements shared how she survived sexual abuse by a priest as a child, it was clear that this was not an ordinary Mass.
“I was violated by a man, not by God,” Peggy Fry told a midday Sunday crowd at a special healing Mass for survivors of sexual abuse at St. Joseph Church in downtown Danbury. “I never blamed God for what happened to me.”
Fry, a Trumbull native who at 16 was sexually abused for a year by her parish priest, is an organizing member of a survivors’ group, which with Bishop Frank Caggiano’s help is emerging as a national model for healing the Catholic church.
The group, which does outreach ministry to survivors, organized the ceremony and chose readings that were separate from what other Catholics heard in church on Sunday. Group members also gave witnesses.
“It took me four decades to come forward, but my faith never wavered — just my respect for some priests,” said David D’Andrea, of Greenwich, a member of the diocesan survivors’ group, who gave the featured witness.
“The pain of abuse is brutal and mind-altering at times,” said D’Andrea, who was molested at 13 by his parish priest. “You ask yourself ‘why me?’ The best thing you can do is reach deep in your faith and trust in God.”
That message was the key theme for speakers and clergy during the hour-long service, which attracted more than 100 parishioners.
The first reading by a
survivor from the group named Peter Philipp was from Ezekiel about God rising souls from the grave. The second reading from Romans about Christ raising the dead was read by Joseph Cann Sr., a soon-to-be-deacon, whose son died of an accidental overdose after admitting to his parents that he was abused as a child by the parish priest.
Of all the Gospel passages that the group could have chosen, they chose the one where Jesus cries at the sight of his friends’ grief, as he proceeds to raise Lazarus
from the dead.
In the homily, the Rev. Lawrence Carew spoke about two dramatic conversions he witnessed after inmates at a local correctional facility confided that they were each abused as boys by priests.
“It was an amazing experience of witnessing Jesus do profound healing in somebody who had been so terribly betrayed and abused,” Carew said. “It was such a clear example, once again, that the Lord wants to heal.”
The homilist said those prison stories were a model for everyone who has been hurt and burdened by clergy sexual abuse.
“Any time we sense the weight of this discouragement we need to invite the Lord to the place within us
where this darkness has descended and give him permission to replace it with a fresh hope,” Carew said. “He is the only one who can raise dead emotional and spiritual tissue back to life.”
Caggiano agreed, saying the church needed to work together to “overcome this evil once and for all, so all of God’s children can be protected and live in grace.”
“The problem is betrayal and the abuse of power and crime in our midst that the body of Christ needs to root out,” Caggiano said. “To those who are going through this, we turn to the Lord who knew what betrayal was, and together we can walk this journey.”