WISCONSIN
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel
Aug. 22, 2015
Lyons — They walked, mother and son, along a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan.
Angie Roscioli had come with other Catholic women for a spiritual retreat led by the Rev. Domenic Roscioli on the infinite nature of God’s love. During a lull, they broke away, just the two of them, to walk and talk for a while.
To this day, Angie cannot say why she chose that moment to tell him. Maybe, she says, the prayers of the day spoke to her. Or the lesson he was trying to impart: Nothing they could do, he told them, no experience in their lives could diminish God’s love for them.
Whatever the reason, on that fall day 37 years ago, Angie told her son she had been sexually assaulted as a little girl by her parish priest.
“I can’t remember what triggered me to tell him,” she says, sitting at her kitchen table, wiping the tears from her blue eyes. “But somehow, I knew it was time.”
Her son stood for a while in silence, devastated. Then, he wrapped his arms around her.
“When I asked her why she didn’t tell me before I was ordained, she said she didn’t want to stand in the way if God wanted me to be a priest,” says Domenic Roscioli, who is nationally known for his work with Catholic women and with children who have cancer.
“That kind of faith just floored me,” he says. “I thought, ‘How can someone love God that much?’ I don’t know ifIcould love God that much.”
A voice for her generation
At 91, Angie Roscioli is thought to be the oldest of the estimated 570 men and women who filed claims in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee bankruptcy.
She learned Saturday that she is among the survivors to be compensated in the $21 million settlement that will be part of the bankruptcy reorganization plan the church is scheduled to file on Monday. …
“I actually think the bankruptcy has caused more pain — like pouring salt in the wounds,” says Domenic Roscioli, who fills in at parishes around the 10-county archdiocese and serves as spiritual director for its Council of Catholic Women.
“You don’t issue a call for healing and then pick them off … like a sniper. And that’s what the lawyers have been doing.
“It was like a false invitation to mercy.”
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