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Patheos / Godzooks: The Faith in Facts Blog

July 21, 2020

By Rick Snedeker

“Love drew Francis back to Mass on Christmas last year,” wrote New York Times opinion writer Elizabeth Bruenig in an essay published this week — “‘Pray for Your Poor Uncle,’ a Predatory Priest Told His Victims.”

“Frances” is a pseudonym. Bruenig used it in her article to protect the identity of a “tall, broad-shouldered man nearing 60” who related to her his deeply troubling youthful abuse by an infamous Catholic cardinal (then a priest), the now-defrocked pedophile and serial sexual abuser of young men, Theodore McCarrick. Among the Vatican charges that caused McCarrick to be “laicized” in February, according to a Washington Post article, were “soliciting sex during confession and committing ‘sins’ with minors and adults ‘with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power.’”

By the end of her moving…