Now — 3 1/2 years after Lahey was defrocked by the Catholic Church — a survivor of clergy sexual abuse is asking for it to be removed.

It’s a letter of introduction in the “Catholic Book of Worship III,” a widely distributed hymn book published in 1994 by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. Lahey was the Bishop of St. George’s at the time of publication; he went on to become the Bishop of Antigonish in 2003.

Gemma Hickey, founder of The Pathways Foundation, said she first learned of the letter six months ago when a woman told her she saw it at St. Paul’s church in St. John’s. The woman approached her about the letter after she contacted Archbishop Martin Currie of the St. John’s archdiocese, but didn’t get the results she was looking for.

“She had said that she wasn’t a survivor of abuse — that wasn’t in her family — but she, herself, was triggered by it and thought she didn’t want that in her church. She didn’t want her family, her children, her grandchildren to come into a church and be exposed to that,” Hickey said.

A couple of weeks ago, Hickey attended her grandmother’s funeral at Mary Queen of Peace church in St. John’s. She came across the same letter when it was time to sing a hymn, and felt emotionally triggered.

“I rarely go into a church anymore based on my experiences. It’s difficult at times. I have some anxiety. But I generally can get past it, work through it, and I’ll still go if friends are getting married or there’s a christening or a funeral,” she said.

“I opened up the hymnal and thought that, where the woman had brought it up to the bishop already, that perhaps something was done about it. But I opened it up and this is what I saw — this letter introducing the hymnal.”

Hickey, who recently walked 900 km across the island of Newfoundland in support of clergy abuse survivors, said seeing Lahey’s letter affected her a great deal. She wants to bring attention to it so the church will act, and plans to write a letter to formally request its removal.

“I’m trying to get the church to focus on the bigger picture here. These kinds of things are triggering for people like me who had these experiences, and if the church is financially responsible for our therapy, and we’re spending more time in therapy because of these circumstances ... if we can avoid this situation, it’s better for everyone involved.”

This weekend, Hickey read the story of Cyril Leonard, a man who survived abuse at the hands of a brother at St. Pat’s and Mount Cashel around 1950. Leonard recently shared his story when he returned to St. John’s for the first time since he left in 1957, after a lifetime of quiet suffering.

“People are still looking for closure. That’s what he’s stating in the article. It’s difficult to find closure if the wound is constantly being reopened, and I experienced that first-hand. And I have the resources; I’ve moved on in many ways, but it still affects me. I can only imagine other people who are in the same place,” said Hickey.

“I have respect for (Currie). I met with him many times and there’s a lot of great work that the church is doing. But there are things that they could be doing better, and this is one way that they can be doing things better.”