KENTUCKY
Indianapolis Star
Written by
Mike Wynn and Peter Smith
The Courier-Journal
FRANKFORT, KY. — State Rep. Tom Burch said Friday he stepped forward with his story of alleged sexual abuse as a child at the hands of a Roman Catholic priest to defend nuns from Vatican criticism.
Burch, D-Louisville, first publicly claimed that he suffered the abuse as a sixth- and seventh-grader in a letter last month to The Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader that questions the Vatican’s assertion of control over an umbrella organization for most American Catholic women’s religious orders.
A Vatican report earlier this spring criticized the Leadership Conference of Women Religious over challenges to church doctrines and male church leadership that speakers had made at its meetings. It put an American archbishop in charge of making changes in the organization’s structure.
Burch said the nuns deserved better treatment.
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