Kenny tackles abuse with compassion

CANADA
The Chronicle-Herald

BY FRANK CAMPBELL
Published January 11, 2013

Sister Nuala Kenny is the heal deal.

Involved in the healing business for more than 40 years, Kenny’s biggest therapeutic challenge has come in her quest over the past two decades to help diagnose and treat the clergy sexual abuse crisis in her beloved Catholic Church.

“I’ve dealt with dying children my whole life,” says the pediatrician and ethicist.

“I’ve dealt with cancer-care children my whole life. Nothing takes the stuffing out of me like doing this stuff, because it’s the church.”

Kenny has had to replenish much of that stuffing during an extensive quarter-century of clerical abuse work that has taken her from an archdiocesan inquiry in St. John’s, N.L., in the late 1980s to numerous public lectures, including a conference at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax last month, and a recently published book, Healing the Church.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.