Cruelty Towards Flock Haunts Clergy Amid Sex Abuse Crisis

LaCroix International
February 28, 2019

https://international.la-croix.com/news/cruelty-towards-flock-haunts-clergy-amid-sex-abuse-crisis/9568


Priests prostrate themselves in front of an altar during Holy Week rituals in a Manila church. (Photo by Maria Tan)About five years ago, a 17-year old girl took her newborn child to church for baptism in the central Philippine city of Cebu. Instead of blessings, a Redemptorist priest heaped scorn on the young mother."You should be ashamed and hide. We should close this church out of shame because you would have this child baptized without a husband," thundered the priest."The disgrace will be passed on to the child," he warned.Amid the drama of breast-beating during the recent Vatican summit on clerical sex abuse, there was hardly any mention of acts of cruelty and self-righteousness like the one displayed in Cebu.The omission betrays a lack of discernment. The cover-up of thousands of sex crimes and the bishops' deadly shell game with predator priests have hurt more than a billion...