UNITED STATES
SNAP Wisconsin
Statement by Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director (Milwaukee)
CONTACT: 414.429.7259
As featured in today’s New York Times, Fr. Jim Connell of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and other clergy who have come forward on the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church have launched a national “whistleblowers” website to invite and help others to do the same. The group’s website is http://www.catholicwhistleblowers.org/.
The group sent a letter today to Pope Francis asking him to take necessary steps to restore the church’s credibility, revoke all oaths of secrecy, open the files on abuse cases, remove from office any bishops who obstructed justice and create an international forum for dialogue between survivors and church leaders.
Connell is also a founding member of a pioneering group of clergy and survivors in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee who over the last two years have been working publically and privately together to end clerical sexual abuse in the local church, bring offenders to justice, and insist on full institutional accountability and transparency.
Connell and the other clergy in today’s Times story are demonstrating what real leadership looks like by Catholic clergy. By coming forward they have followed the path, difficult, necessary, and ultimately liberating, of the many clerical survivors around the country who preceded them. They have earned the trust and respect of survivors, the public and the church.
The clergy whistle blowers is a hard won beginning of, one can only hope, of how the sexual abuse crisis in the church will be resolved. It certainly cannot be done without clergy like Connell and others. And if clergy and other Catholic leaders finally come forward on this crisis, speak out, demand justice, then the longed for day may come when survivors will no longer need to.
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