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	Pope Leads Way in Long Process of Needed Healing By Marvin Read Pueblo Chieftain April 19, 2008 http://www.chieftain.com/life/1208584800/2 Olan Horne, as a boy, had been molested by a Catholic priest. Now an adult, he was among a small group of Bostonians who met Thursday with Pope Benedict XVI to communicate and share their continuing hurt. Each had the chance for a one-on-one chat with the pontiff, and each let Benedict know of the lifelong pain that a priest's selfishness had caused years before, and continued as church officials failed to work with them. Horne, recalling what had happened between him and the pope at the meeting, may have best summarized where the Roman Catholic Church is heading after years of one of the nastiest scandals in history. He relayed to reporters that he had told the pope that it was time to move beyond anger and embrace hope. He is, of course, correct, and while that may be easier said than done, it is the only path out of a morass that involves thousands of immoral priests, many of whom are now deceased, defrocked and/or imprisoned, and hundreds of bishops who played a deceptive shell game of moving men they knew to be abusers from parish to parish in order to hide them and to spare the church scandal. What happened was that the priests, as they were assigned new parishes, had fresh fields to mine for victims; the scandal, repressed for decades, eventually blew up in the church's collective face. While of different natures, the sins of the priests and their episcopal superiors were of equal magnitude, even if the higher-ups are, in many cases, still at their jobs - wiser, chastened and wary, perhaps, but still at work. When Benedict met with the American bishops Wednesday in Washington and reminded them of the horrors of the abuse, many of those who have held office for more than a few years must have squirmed as they realized their own complicity. Lawyers, of course, have profited from the lawsuits that have emptied diocesan coffers but brought scant relief to victims, a litigious process that continues unabated. Sad beyond recognition is the guilt by association suffered by the rest of the priests - guys who are innocent of wrongdoing, but still feel the accusatory looks that are aimed at anyone in a Roman collar, who hear the snide comments directed their way. Almost all U.S. dioceses have put into place systems that now safeguard children from abuse, whether at the hands of clergy or laypersons - safeguards that decades ago, one never would have dreamed were needed but, alas, have always been needed and always will be. Clearly, the Roman Catholic Church has been changed and demeaned by the scandal. It will, however, survive. The purgative process has been in place for several years and it will be a generation or more before the sense of priestly and hierarchical integrity is restored. For those who care - even if many have moved away from identification with the church - the institution, led both by laity and hierarchy, has begun a long and difficult path to healing. The stench of evil still hangs heavy, but the willingness, at long last, of the pope to tell crowds and reporters that he laments what has happened and to face a representative few of the abused to offer words of caring and to manifest some signs of official repentance is encouraging, hopeful. Said Horne: (the pope) "thanked me for having the courage, and (said) that he was with us on this path. I asked him to embrace us. He said - and I can't recall the exact words - 'I think I have begun to.' " "There was a sense," said Horne, a man who has left the church of his childhood and not introduced his children to that church, that "we had begun the journey." The signs are relatively small, and the steps taken but tentative ones. But in matters of faith, it really does come down to hope in a better tomorrow. Marvin Read may be contacted at marvinr@chieftain.com
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