WASHINGTON (DC)
Reuters
February 20, 2019
By Katharine Jackson
In the study of his home outside Washington, victims’ advocate Tom Doyle searched a shelf packed with books to find the thick report that led him to stop practicing as a priest and devote himself to helping those who had been sexually abused by clergymen.
The 1985 report was one of the first exposes in a sexual abuse scandal that has plagued the Catholic Church. Pope Francis has called senior bishops to meet for four days starting on Thursday to discuss how to tackle the worsening crisis.
Doyle, 74, who lost his job as a canon lawyer in the Vatican Embassy soon after the report was made public and eventually decided he could not continue working as an active priest, is deeply skeptical that anything of substance will come of this week’s meeting.
“They’re going to pray and they’re going to meditate. But it’s totally useless,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to have something like this in 2019. These men should know right out of the gate that if you have a priest who’s raping children, you don’t allow them to continue.”
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