NEW YORK (NY)
The Mary Sue
December 15, 2017
By Princess Weekes
There was a recent episode of one of my favorite podcasts, My Favorite Murder episode 99: “Shin Kick,” which discussed the murder and case of Irene Garza, and instantly I thought, I need to write about this, but how? Well, life finds a way.
Today, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse finished a 1,000-page report, filled with recommendations to the Church including that “Catholic priests should not be forced to live a life of celibacy, and the sanctity of the confessional should not prevent religious figures from reporting child sex abuse.” According to the findings by the Royal Commission, 61.8% of sexual abuse cases connected to religion came from the Catholic church.
The case of the rape and murder of Irene Garza is tied heavily to the corruption and cover-ups that happen with just that kind of abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. On April 16, 1960, Irene Garza was last seen going in for confession—in the rectory rather than the confessional, unusually—at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen, Texas. Garza’s body wasn’t located until the 21st of April, in a canal, and the postmortem examination found that Garza was raped and beaten before dying of suffocation. All physical evidence, semen, blood, hair, etc., was washed away by the canal.
Father John Feit was the last person to see her alive.
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