Charisma News
3/7/2013 Naomi O’Leary/Reuters
Colm O’Gorman was 14 years old when Father Sean Fortune arrived unannounced at his parents’ house in a small town in southern Ireland. The priest was given tea and a seat by the fire, and asked the teenager to help set up a youth group.
“I was 14, and very eager and hungry to be out in the world, involved in things, doing things, making a difference. And that’s what he exploited,” said O’Gorman, now 46 and the executive director of Amnesty International in Ireland.
The abuse that followed, culminating in Fortune’s repeated rape of the boy, was part of one of the greatest scandals ever to hit the Catholic Church, damaging the curtailed papacy of Pope Benedict and posing a huge challenge to whoever succeeds him.
O’Gorman’s story is just one in a worldwide scandal that destroyed lives, bankrupted dioceses, and in many cases cost the Church its most precious asset: faith.
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