AUSTRALIA
ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
November 4, 2017
By Hayley Gleeson with Julia Baird
Illustrations by Rocco Fazzari
Pope Francis has denounced domestic abuse as “craven acts of cowardice”. But will the Australian Catholic Church have the courage to answer his call and root out the “shameful ill-treatment” of women in its midst? And is its all-male hierarchy, still reeling from revelations of child sexual abuse, capable of leading the charge?
Over the past three decades spent working for the Catholic Church, Maria George has been exposed to dozens of women who have survived intimate partner violence. The work of a pastoral associate often involves caring for vulnerable or distressed parishioners.
But the story of one particular woman’s abuse by her husband, a controlling man who raped his wife repeatedly over the decades of their marriage, has stayed with her.
“She endured something like 16 pregnancies, quite a few miscarriages, and the stillbirth of a baby,” Ms George, a senior pastoral associate at Melbourne’s St Kilda-Elwood parish, told ABC News.
She knew that being forced to have sex was wrong, and she often thought about leaving, Ms George said.
But, “her response to that [abuse] was, ‘this is my duty as a wife, for better or worse’, and ‘I said in marriage vows that I will stick with this’.” And she did.
Another woman, a mother of seven living in Melbourne who spoke to Ms George about her alcoholic husband’s physical, verbal and emotional abuse, sought the help of a priest.
He told her the violence was “God’s will” and that she must endure it because she’d promised in her marriage vows that she would, for better or worse.
“The [priest’s] attitude was that it was perhaps a moral failing by that man, but you have a duty to forgive,” Ms George said.
“That is what the Christian faith teaches us, that you must be forgiving, and basically forgive and go back and get more of the same treatment. That is what happened in the end.”
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