AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Christopher Knaus
Monday 6 February 2017
One of the first American priests to have broken ranks on child abuse said the Catholic church still fails to comprehend the depth of spiritual damage done to victims.
Father Thomas Doyle, then a canonical lawyer at the Vatican’s Washington embassy, was tasked with investigating child abuse cases in the US in the mid-1980s, preparing a 40-page report for the nuncio, or papal ambassador, which he said was handed to the pope.
Doyle’s warnings about the abuse went unheeded and he said he was pushed out of his position with the embassy in 1986.
He has spent the time since helping survivors, speaking to thousands of individuals abused by Catholic clergy.
Doyle, giving evidence to the child abuse royal commission in Sydney on Tuesday, spoke of a life-changing moment in his early years of examining abuse claims, when he met a 10-year-old survivor face to face.
“When I looked into his face, I still see it, it was empty,” Doyle said. “And that moment changed my life. The parents were simple, good, decent people who could not comprehend why they were being treated the way they were by the church.
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