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	Ignored Again By Yvonne Abraham Boston Globe April 16, 2008 http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/04/16/ignored_again/ For 54 years, Skip Marcella has been bound to his church. St. Mary Star of the Sea, in East Boston, was his home. Marcella served as an altar boy there. He married his wife, Dottie, there. In the mornings, he unlocked the church for his fellow Catholics to come and pray. When the clergy abuse scandal tore through the Boston Archdiocese, Marcella was angry. Especially at Cardinal Bernard F. Law, who had refused to keep pedophile priests from their victims. "I was very, very upset," he says. "People were just shuffling it off, and moving people around, and nobody was taking responsibility." Boston became synonymous with the scandal, the epicenter of a seismic controversy that sent aftershocks across the country. Diocese after diocese admitted to the same appalling lapses. Five thousand victims came forward. Marcella saw fellow parishioners falling away, disaffected Catholics leaving the church in disgust. He would not follow them. He could not. "It was my faith," Marcella says. "I can get upset with management, but I still have my faith in God." But his faith outlasted his beloved St Mary's. The church was shuttered in 2004, one of scores of closings in the face of shrinking congregations. On Sunday afternoon, Marcella went to Mass at the Madonna Queen National Shrine in Orient Heights. It was a nice service, but it's no St Mary's. Marcella, like hundreds of thousands of loyal local Catholics, could use some encouragement these days. He thought his new pope, Benedict XVI, might provide that with an appearance here. It was a reasonable expectation. You would think that the first papal visit since the abuse scandal broke would naturally include a stop in Boston, where Catholics first felt the pain of the crisis. You would think that Benedict, who told reporters en route to the United States yesterday, "It is a great suffering for the church in the United States and for the church in general and for me personally that this could happen," would want to bring real life to that statement with an appearance in the archdiocese that remains the most potent symbol of the church's failings. You would think that a Vatican that handed Law a cushy ceremonial post overseeing a basilica in Rome after his catastrophic failings in Boston would want to square the account with a papal visit to the 1.8 million Catholics Law left behind. You would be wrong. Washington and New York get the pope this week. But despite the pleas of Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, and the fervent hopes of local Catholics, Boston does not. Vatican ambassador Archbishop Pietro Sambi said the pope is skipping Boston not because he thinks a visit here would make the abuse scandal too prominent a part of his trip, but because the pontiff, who turns 81 today, simply could not manage another stop in his six-day itinerary. "You ask why he's not going to Boston," Sambi told the National Catholic Reporter. "But you could also ask why he's not going to San Francisco or some other place. He just can't go everywhere." As if Boston were the same as some other place. There has been a lot of talk about whether Benedict should meet with victims of clergy abuse. Of course he should. But it's not just the victims who need him. It's also people like Marcella - Boston Catholics who kept the faith and showed up for Mass week after week, even after it was clear the church had let them down. "I'm disappointed," Marcella says. "For us, his coming here would have demonstrated that this is an issue he does care very much about, and he wants to aid in healing our community." Marcella has every right to be incensed. Instead, he's just disappointed. Benedict is lucky to have him. Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at abraham@globe.com.
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