BishopAccountability.org
	More on the Victims Who Met with Benedict By Julia Duin Washington Times April 18, 2008 http://video1.washingtontimes.com/papalvisit/2008/04/more_on_popes_meeting_with_vic.html I got the call at 3 p.m. as I was returning home from the Mass. I had been up since 5 a.m. covering that and was beat. On the phone was someone from SNAP, the ad hoc group representing many of the people sexually abused by priests. The SNAP person was saying he was getting all sorts of calls from foreign journalists about the pope meeting with victims of sex abuse today at the papal nunciature on Massachusetts Avenue. Having tried to drive up to the nunciature Tuesday night, I knew what a traffic mess the place was and how impossible it would be to park anywhere near it, much less glimpse several folks being hustled through the back door as it were. I told him there had been rumors all week the pope might meet with victims but we still didn't know where and when. Now read the official Vatican release: Press release of the Holy See Press Office on the meeting of the Holy Father, Benedict XVI, with a group of sexually abused victims by members of the Clergy Today at 4:15 p.m. the Holy Father met in the chapel at the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington D.C. with a small group of persons who were sexually abused by members of the clergy. The Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, accompanied the group. They prayed with the Holy Father, who afterwards listened to their personal accounts and offered them words of encouragement and hope. His Holiness assured them of his prayers for their intentions, for their families and for all victims of sexual abuse. By the time I got wind of this, it was well past 5. Apparently word was whipping through the media center downtown; problem is, I was no longer there. Two other reporters from my paper were in the area, but they were in media lock-downs waiting to report on various events the pope was attending in the evening. Word was the group members had talked with NPR. Later I found out they were on CNN. Rocco Palmo, the meister-writer of the whispers-in-the-loggia blog, said the meeting *had* to occur in Washington, as the nunciature is literally the pope's house in a way that his lodgings in New York will not be. So, if he was going to host a meeting, it needed to be while he was still in DC. And today was his last day here. I called around some Boston contacts and got enough details to update Friday's front-page story. Apparently one member of the group, Bernie McDaid, is an activist on behalf of folks who have been abused by priests. He had gone to Rome in 2003 to seek a meeting with the pope and ended up instead with a high church official who remembered his name. So when it came to selecting who should meet with the pontiff, his name came up. It's a bit muddy right now figuring out if the Vatican chose all these guys or if Cardinal O'Malley had some sort of input. One thing some of the group members had in common was they had been abused by the same priest: one Joe Birmingham. I talked with Father Bob Hoatson, a priest who was himself abused in the 1970s, who will be demonstrating in New York during the papal visit on behalf of sex abuse victims. "The meeting should have been part of the pope's public itinerary," he said, "but instead it was done in secrecy. SNAP had already sent him a letter asking for a meeting but they were denied." Robert Costello, a Boston activist, felt the same way. "He met with five people for a half hour; that is 6 1/2 minutes per person," he said. "It is more of the same: secret meetings in secret rooms planned by the church. The abuse happened behind closed doors too." Joe Cultrera, a Boston filmmaker whose film, "The Hand of God," is about the abuse suffered by his brother, Paul, at the hands of Fr. Birmingham, said there was no way the pope could visit America and not deal with the issue. "For him to make a big point now on meeting victims; that should have been done 10 years ago," he said. "If he wants to do something now, he should fire Cardinal Law," the retired Boston prelate forced out of his job because of the high amount of abuse cases in his archdiocese. The cardinal now lives in relative comfort in Rome.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.