PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Review
STEPHEN HUBA | Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2017
A group of Catholic lay people and clergy is calling on Greensburg Bishop Edward C. Malesic and other church hierarchs to acknowledge that the clergy sexual abuse scandal is feeding the opioid epidemic.
“He’s got to take some responsibility,” said Tom Venditti, founder of Faithful Catholics Against Pedophilia.
Venditti of Bolivar said he founded FCAP earlier this year to help victims of clergy sexual abuse and encourage them to stay in the Catholic Church.
The group held a news conference Wednesday prior to the last of seven Summer Diocesan Drug Education and Prayer Service Evenings led by Malesic. The final event was held at St. Thomas More University Parish in Indiana Borough.
Venditti said he wanted to address “Malesic’s failure to acknowledge clerical sexual abuse as a doorway to heroin abuse and death.”
“We’re here specifically because one of the things you’re not going to hear tonight … is that the majority of victims of clergy sexual abuse become addicts, whether it’s to alcohol or heroin or other hard drugs,” he said.
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