AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
A former Catholic altar boy (let’s call him “Cedric” – not his real name) has told Broken Rites about his experiences at the hands of Father Francis Xavier Brown (a Catholic priest in the Dominican religious order) in Adelaide around 1960. Cedric says he still feels hurt (half a century later) by his experience as an altar boy.
In the late 1950s, Cedric (born in 1950) became a pupil in the junior grades at Blackfriars Priory School (an all-boys school conducted by the Dominican priests and brothers) in Prospect, Adelaide. Eventually, Cedric was selected by the Dominicans to begin training as an altar boy for Saint Lawrence’s parish church in Prospect, North Adelaide. This parish was conducted by the Dominicans and these priests were involved in both the school and the parish.
Cedric says that while he was an altar boy he came under the supervision of Fr Francis Xavier Brown O.P. The letters “O.P.”, after his name, referred to the “Order of Preachers” – that is, the official name of the Dominican religious order. For a time, Father Brown was also simultaneously Cedric’s class teacher. Therefore, Cedric was under the control of Father Brown at the church altar and also in the classroom.
And Father was responsible for hearing boys’ Confessions. That is, Cedric was forced to tell all his “sins” to Father Brown in the confessional. The secrecy of Confession gave Father Brown extraordinary power over Cedric.
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