MASSACHUSETTS
The Pilot
ON: 3/28/2014, BY CHRISTOPHER S. PINEO
BRAINTREE — A local clergy abuse survivor and playwright welcomed the news that Pope Francis had tapped Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley to serve as one of the first members of the new Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.
Michael Mack, creator and performer of the one-man play “Conversations with My Molester: A Journey of Faith,” said a Vatican announcement, March 22, that the pope had established the new Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors came as welcome news to the survivor of clerical sex abuse.
“I think it was an important step,” said Michael Mack, creator and performer of the one-man play “Conversations with My Molester: A Journey of Faith.”
“I am especially excited by the makeup of the commission, because there are actually more laypeople than clergy on it — five laypeople, three clergy,” he said. “I was really pleased to see that one of those laypeople is a sexual abuse survivor herself.”
Mack said that aspect of the commission gave him hope because the commission will include the voice of a survivor — Marie Collins, a native of Ireland who survived abuse as a 13-year-old girl.
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