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	Family Victimized by Priest's Adultery Tells of Easter Pain Digital Journal April 4, 2010 http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/290024 The heart of the Catholic church at Easter may be pierced with arrows of criticism, but the thrashing about from its wounds may be nothing compared to the pain of a family, suffering generations from a priest's adultery. The 93-year-old woman told a story, in the ways an elder can do, of a family racked by anguish for many years. The gentle lady, whose name cannot be used for purposes of family concerns, her age and status, declared how awful it was when a priest disobeyed his vows and created a terrible incident that has affected whole generations of a family. Today's news speaks of priests and sexual abuse, of cover-ups by religious authority. Most of this news concerns abuse of the young. But there have been priests who have used their relationships and power to seduce young women, some to a very sad end. So it was with a young woman whose story was told by her niece who was 12 years old at the time and an old woman of more than nine decades today. The woman was young by the years of today but mature in the days of the story, and at age 38 had an affair with a priest. She was married and had five children. The elder who related this looked up with great sorrow as she told of this woman's dilemma. The young woman became pregnant with the priest's child and in her shame tried to abort the child, then died following this, leaving her husband a widower and her children without a mother. What was the family's great sorrow? The old woman lifted her head and recalled. "Her young children were left to struggle on their own with only their father who had to work and be gone much of the time. They were left without the guidance of someone they loved. They grew up knowing how their mother had died painfully at a very young age. As each child got older, he or she learned about what had happened with the priest. The story was told to one, then the other, as each child became an adult. It was sad; it still is." Generations moved on, and as time passed the story faded; but the memory of religious wrongs remained, sufficient for many in the family to entirely reject Christianity, although some never really knew why. The why was unfolded by an old woman, with tears still stinging her eyes. She had watched the young woman die in great sorrow, and with sorrow the old woman ended her story with these words, "The evil seems never to end." A grandson considers the Easter holiday and looks with eyes filled with tears, "I have never felt at home in a church, but I couldn't understand fully until now. Perhaps I may never be happy in church knowing my family's deep hurt and its source that continues today." The head of the German Catholic Church, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg said on Good Friday. "The church is appalled by the harm done to victims who were often unable to speak about their pain for decades, he said. "Wounds were inflicted that are hardly curable," the bishop added.
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