As Vatican Summit on Abuse Prevention Starts, a Clergy Sex Abuse Survivor Stops Eating

By Nancy Eve Cohen
New England Public Radio
February 20, 2019

https://www.nepr.net/post/vatican-summit-abuse-prevention-starts-clergy-sex-abuse-survivor-stops-eating#stream/0

Vatican City in Rome, Italy.

A survivor of clergy sex abuse from Chester, Massachusetts, said he'll stop eating starting at midnight Wednesday until Pope Francis acknowledges he's received letters from survivors of abuse from Massachusetts — or that the Pope returns the letters.

Olan Horne, 59, says he was abused by a priest in Lowell in the 1970s. He said letters describing the abuse he and three others suffered were delivered to the Pope this fall by Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley.

“What we are asking for is that all they do is validate that he received the letters and that these people were heard,” said Horne. “Nothing happens until a survivor has spoken and been heard. Some of these people have waited 20-plus years to be heard.”

Horne starts his hunger strike on the eve of a summit on the prevention of abuse at the Vatican, attended by the presidents of the world’s conferences of Catholic bishops.

In a separate request, not related to the hunger strike, Horne has asked the Pope to investigate the way Bishop Mitchell Rozanski of the Springfield Diocese has responded to survivors.

A statement from the diocese said it disagrees with Horne's assertions:

The statement also said Bishop Rozanski participated in "four regional listening and dialogue sessions on the abuse crisis."