AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun
Elise Elliott
Herald Sun
I WAS brought up a strict Catholic. I attended a Catholic convent school for 13 years and was taught by nuns.
My family went to mass every Sunday. As a little girl I cherished it: those massive doors, the cool serenity of church, the shafts of sunlight piercing through the stained-glass windows, the sombre magnificence of it all.
By the age of five I knew all the prayers by heart. Most memorable was the Penitential Rite: “I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do.”
In my 20s I no longer attended mass regularly, but I would sometimes stop in to a church after going for a run, just to rekindle that sense of reverence and reflection.
But now, as a woman, I can no longer go inside a Catholic Church. The reports of abuse and cover-up have made the religion hollow to me.
I know at least six people who have been abused by priests. Some are friends, some family friends, others are relatives. Their harrowing stories are depressingly similar: they were singled out and preyed upon by someone they trusted and revered. They were too scared to confess for fear of going to hell.
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