SNAP Speaking Out About Grand Jury Report, Continue Push For Bishop Zubik To Resign

KDKA
August 20, 2018

https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2018/08/20/snap-gran-jury-report-push-bishop-zubik-to-resign/

Victims of child sex abuse in Pennsylvania Catholic dioceses are speaking out in the wake of a grand jury report.

Today brought the first public acknowledgement from Pope Francis that the Catholic Church failed to act over sexual abuse by priests.

In a letter released by the Vatican, Pope Francis writes, “Looking back to the past, no effort to beg, pardon and to seek to repair the harm done, will ever be sufficient. Looking ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated.”

Bishop Zubik of the Pittsburgh Diocese also wrote a letter that was read at every Mass on Sunday.

In the letter, Bishop Zubik emphasized there is no priest or deacon active in the ministry that has a credible allegation against him.

He goes on to say he has followed every step in taking appropriate action to deal with allegations of sexual abuse.

That however, has not satisfied many survivors, who held public events in Pittsburgh and Greensburg.

A number of people with SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, spoke outside of the Pittsburgh diocese and said they want to stand up to the Catholic Church.

One man drove eight hours from Connecticut to be here, while another drove from Erie. Others said family members have committed suicide since they were abused as children.

“Don’t give us any more words. We don’t want prayer. We want justice,” Frances Sambor said.

Sambor’s brother was raped by convicted priest Richard Dorsch and later killed himself. Sambor joined the group in asking that the statute of limitations be lifted so older victims of sexual abuse could sue the church for damages.

“There’s too many suicides within these Catholic churches, ranging from all ages, and there needs to be justice for everybody,” Sambor said. “You don’t leave decades of children out of the statute of limitations.”

The grand jury report was released six days ago and SNAP says much good has come for the victims.

“Victims are elated, they are so excited because their stories are finally getting to be told. And, they’re being believed. They were believed by the grand jury and they’ve getting believed by the public and that’s been very uplifting for them. Bishop Zubik needs to step down. In fact, all the bishops that enabled and covered up child sex crimes need to resign. The grand jury report can be compared to the Penn State scandal. As we have seen there, the administrators were fired and some went to jail,” Judy Jones said.

As SNAP was holding the press conference Father Ron Lengwin came out and offered to take two victims inside to speak with Bishop Zubik.

The victims declined the invitation saying they wanted the media to be there instead of it being a closed-door discussion.

Lengwin says he supports lifting the statute if it applies to all public and private institutions and not just the Catholic church.