The first time I saw St. Peter’s Basilica, I felt nothing. It was not the reaction I had thought I would have. I was a lifelong Catholic who had once seriously considered becoming a nun, and who now reported on the Vatican for a Jesuit magazine. But just a few days before, on a silent retreat, I had been red-faced, tears burning down my cheeks, as I hurled all my anger at God for standing by, apparently unmoved, as tens of thousands of children were sexually abused by Catholic priests over decades.
It was winter 2019. The previous six months on the religion beat had been wall-to-wall sex abuse coverage, starting with the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report, which recounted in harrowing detail 70 years of abuse and cover-up. Then came the once-beloved Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s fall from grace, when his serial abuse of minors and seminarians was exposed by a…
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