‘Sexism Is a Cardinal Sin’ Catholic Women Tell Vatican

Catholic women with parasols expressing the call for women’s ordination in the church at the Vatican, Aug. 29, 2022.

By Mitchell Atencio

On Monday, leaders of two Catholic groups dedicated to women’s ordination in the church reminded Catholic cardinals not to ignore their “sisters outside,” as the cardinals met to discuss church reforms.

Earlier this year, Pope Francis named two women to a dicastery, or papal committee, that selects new bishops in the church. However, Monday’s closed-door gathering of cardinals excluded women.

While cardinals met inside, a small group of women from the U.S.-based Women’s Ordination Conference and Women’s Ordination Worldwide stood at an entrance with bright red umbrellas bearing messages that included “ordain women” and “more than half the church.” They spoke with entering cardinals and handed them a letter explaining their efforts for recognition. Within 10 minutes, police detained the group, holding them for about four hours. Officially, the group was held on grounds of protesting without a permit.

Kate McElwee, the executive director of the Women’s Ordination Conference and one of the women at the protest, spoke with Sojourners’ Mitchell Atencio hours after being released. She discussed her hope for women’s ordination, Francis’ attitude toward reforms, and the symbolic nature of their activism.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Mitchell Atencio, Sojourners: What were the cardinals meeting to discuss?

Kate McElwee: Pope Francis called a consistory and on Saturday, he created 20 new cardinals and [on Monday and Tuesday] he’s calling the world’s cardinals together for meetings. There are 197 prelates [church officials] who are in Rome particularly to discuss the reforms of the new apostolic constitution that was promulgated on Pentecost.

One of the significant reforms of that constitution is that he has opened the possibility for women, or any layperson, to lead dicasteries in the Vatican — this is a role that traditionally had been reserved for bishops and cardinals, so this is a significant move.

I’ve heard the intention [for these meetings is] to have the cardinals meet one another, practice and model synodality, and then get to know the constitutional reforms. But, of course, there are no women in this meeting.

We wanted to witness and just draw attention to the fact that this is a closed-door session where no women are present, ironically, when one of the biggest changes of the constitution is that women can now lead dicasteries

And how did your action go? You and your colleagues were detained for about four hours, what were interactions with police like, why did they say they detained you?

We had a prayer and an intention that our voices would carry through these closed-door sessions and provoke the conscience of the prelates meeting to know that their sisters are waiting outside. We opened bright red parasols with our messages written on them; everything from “reform means women,” “it’s reigning men,” “sexism is a cardinal sin,” and other messages. We processed down Via della Conciliazione till we reached the gates of the piazza, and then continued on to the dicastery for the doctrine of faith, where it’s a major entry point for the Vatican and we thought we could greet cardinals as they entered in.

We had a letter that said, “don’t forget your sisters outside,” but we greeted them very respectfully and were able to interact with a handful of cardinals who were going into their meetings. Some were more supportive than others. But in about 10 minutes various levels police came towards us and asked us to close our umbrellas and provide our identification documents. We complied after a short time, and they penned us into a small [space] between the colonnades. We were there for an hour, and their main complaint was that we didn’t have a permit — I lived in Rome for eight years, it’s very hard to get a permit for women’s ordination next to the Vatican. After an hour they escorted us to the closest police station where we were held for another three hours or so. It was a lot of waiting for them to process us for protesting without a permit, particularly at the Vatican. It was very, very Italian experience. We stopped for coffee before they brought us to the police station. I think they didn’t believe we were dangerous, but it was a matter of bureaucracy and formalities for them.

Why is women’s ordination important in the Catholic church?

It is a matter of justice for most Catholic women. Our calls are not heard. Many women feel like they have no voice or vote in the Catholic church. And there’s layers and layers of sexism that marginalize women from important leadership positions, both ministerial and administrative.

And like me, for so many Catholic women, this is our home. This is our identity and our tradition, and through the sacraments is how we navigate the world. To be considered second tier, or to not have our voices heard, is deeply painful. And we see the effects of this exclusion throughout the world.

One of the most important things about our work is to recognize that women’s ordination isn’t just about women priests. The Catholic church has 1.36 billion members. More than half of those people are women, and they have no representation within the church. That kind of exclusion and subordination is replicated through culture, education, and all the ways the Catholic church has power in the world — including having a seat at the United Nations and working to subvert policies on gender equality.

There’s also a deep pain. In my work, I get to hear the stories and the testimonies of women called to priesthood. You hear their vocational stories and they’re not dissimilar to male priests in any way.

I’m a very hopeful person. I believe that the church can actually be this incredible force for good and justice in the world, if it opened its doors to women.

How would you describe Pope Francis’ relationship to the movement for women’s ordination?

I think Pope Francis has done quite a bit to encourage greater dialogue around the question of women in the church, particularly through his Synod on Synodality and engaging all Catholics, to be involved in this collective discernment. In the United States [this] has inspired a lot of these diocese and synod reports to include mentions of the urgent calls for women’s ordination and women in ministry. In that sense, he’s really changed the culture. Because women’s ordination to the priesthood is a taboo in a lot of ways. And through synodality and dialogue that we’re engaging in together, he has opened up that conversation in bigger ways.

Unfortunately, when it comes to women’s ordination, specifically throughout his pontificate, he has repeated the logic and thinking of his predecessors. Although he has convened two commissions on women deacons, [and] that is still an evolving question in the Catholic church, on priesthood I think Francis hasn’t moved much, [even though] he has encouraged greater dialogue and called for greater inclusion of women in the life of the church.

What gives you hope that this is possible?

When I think about Pope Francis, he is a man who has changed his mind. He is leading the global church in collective discernment, which is so messy, but it means this is all in play, this is all in conversation. There’s a great opening for the church leaders to really listen to Catholics on the ground. The majority of Catholics are calling for women’s ordination and greater leadership roles in the church. That gives me a lot of hope.

As part of the synod on synodality, the Vatican’s Synod office listed the Women’s Ordination Conference’s resources on their official website, which, would be unthinkable in a different pontificate. That means that this is part of the conversation, the elephant in the room is on the table up for discussion. As long as we’re still talking about this — and we are because this question has not gone away in so many decades — that there’s still hope.

We’ve seen Pope Francis really model what a pastor is. I believe Francis is a quite a pastoral person. So part of my work is to create opportunities where he can hear the testimonies and vocations of women. He formalized the ministry of catechists recently and has opened the role of acolyte and lector to women, and that language really identifies discerning a vocation. When I read that language, I think that’s the same spirit that calls women to ordained ministry. I just hope that he’s open to hearing the calls of women to ordination. Unfortunately, when you’re surrounded by the architecture of the Vatican, interaction with women — particularly if you call these meetings of only men — can be quite limited.

What has it meant to you to do this work internationally and across cultures?

It’s absolutely essential. When you get to meet women in different cultures and listen to the language that they use to describe their longing for leadership and ministerial roles, there are nuances, but women around the world are just longing for equality for their voices to be heard.

The particularities of circumstances make priorities different, but at the core it’s that women are longing to be equal and to be embraced in by their own church. It’s very powerful to work alongside international women and leaders who are coming with their own context and their own stories. This can’t come from one place. This is a universal church. It’s part of that discernment that Francis is trying to model and lead us through. Listening to the voices and the context of all of women in different places is really important to what we do.

Complete Article HERE!

Irish protester among seven held after demonstration at Vatican calling for women’s inclusion in Church

Pope Francis convened a closed-door gathering of the Catholic Church’s cardinals.

By Sarah Mac Donald

Seven protesters, including one Irish woman, were detained by police in Rome over their protest at the Vatican calling for women’s inclusion at all levels of the Catholic Church.

iriam Duignan joined six other women in St Peter’s Square yesterday to draw attention to the lack of any female presence at a consistory – a closed-door gathering of the church’s cardinals – convened by Pope Francis.

The seven held up parasols with messages such as “ordain women” and “sexism is a cardinal sin” as the world’s cardinals filed in for the first of their two-day extraordinary meeting.

Ms Duignan, a spokesperson for the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research in the UK, said she hoped the protest would stir the collective conscience of church leadership to open its doors to women who long to be heard and to serve their church as equals in Christ.

“I chose to be present at the consistory as a member of Women’s Ordination Worldwide to help shine a light on the Vatican’s cover-up of the history of women’s founding role and leadership in the early centuries of the church,” said Ms Duignan.

The London-based advocate for women’s ordination told the Irish Independent that expert theologians, including some in the Vatican, have concluded “there is no scriptural justification for the banishing of women; it is a choice and it can and must be changed”.

She added: “The Roman police were encouraged to remove us from view and to hide our words and witness from the world.”

Though they greeted numerous cardinals as the prelates passed inside the Vatican’s gates, most of the high ranking clerics “clearly did not want to engage or dwell on the messages on our red parasols”.

“The Vatican is desperately afraid of campaigners drawing attention to their discrimination against women and so choose to intimidate anyone who dares to publicly challenge them,” Ms Duignan said.

According to Ms Duignan, the small group of protesters was quickly moved out of sight by a “huge police presence” of 20 officers.

However, one Italian prelate congratulated Ms Duignan when he learned the protest was for women’s inclusion and ordination.

Referring to the call in many recent synod reports for women’s equal participation at all levels in the church, including ordination, Ms Duignan said: “People see that such an influential institution cannot be allowed to function with an all-male leadership that bans women from having a say in any of its policies or teachings.”

Asked about the collapse in priest numbers in the Irish Church, she said: “It is glaringly obvious that to deny women the opportunity to fill this role, despite a desperate shortage of priests, is an injustice to all Catholics.”

The seven women were released from police custody after four hours. They may face charges and a court hearing.

Their parasols were confiscated as evidence.

The Vatican and police in Rome have been contacted for comment.

Complete Article HERE!

Clergy sex abuse survivors question Cathedral funeral for Weakland

Former archbishop embroiled in scandal during tenure

By

Victims of clergy sexual abuse in the Milwaukee Catholic Archdiocese are questioning the decision to hold a funeral mass for former Archbishop Rembert Weakland at St. John’s Cathedral.

Weakland died last week in Greenfield at 95 after a long illness.

He was at the center of a clergy sexual abuse scandal in May 2002, when the church revealed there were six active priests in the archdiocese with histories of sexually abusing children.

“I’m doing my best to eradicate it. That’s what I’m doing,” Weakland said at a public meeting in Brookfield.

Days later, he made national news.

ABC and WISN 12 News broke the story of Weakland paying nearly $500,000 to a man to stay quiet about their sexual relationship while the man was a student at Marquette University in the late ’70s.

“He was sitting next to me and then started to try to kiss me and continued to force himself on me and pulled down my trousers and attempted to fondle me. Think of it in terms of date rape,” said Paul Marcoux in 2002.

The Vatican accepted Weakland’s resignation the next day. He had reached his mandatory retirement age of 75.

Years later, Weakland claimed during a deposition that he didn’t realize the scope of the clergy sex abuse problem until the mid-1980s.

“And it became clear to me that this wasn’t just something I had bumped into a few times in Milwaukee, but a national phenomenon that had to be dealt with,” Weakland said.

But it’s Weakland’s practice of shielding priests known to have sexually abused children that survivors of clergy sexual abuse say disqualifies him from the honor of a cathedral funeral Tuesday.

“He would not look us in the face. He would not talk to us,” said Peter Isely Tuesday in front of the cathedral.

Isely is the program director of Nate’s Mission, a clergy sex abuse survivor’s group.

“So I want to say that this man being buried Tuesday is unrepentant. He died unrepentant for the harm that he caused. And no mercy. He had no mercy on us whatsoever,” Isely said.

Retired priest Father James Connell said holding the funeral at the Cathedral is “rubbing salt in the wounds” of clergy sexual abuse victims.

“I call for all Catholic clergy in the archdiocese, all bishops, priests and deacons to stay away from the funeral tomorrow,” Connell said.

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee said current Archbishop Jerome Listecki was out of town Monday and unavailable for comment.

When WISN 12 News asked why Listecki chose to have the funeral at the cathedral, a spokesperson responded in an email that “It’s important to keep in mind that the Cathedral is the parish of the archbishop.”

The archbishop’s Chief of Staff Jerry Topczewski also released a statement explaining the decision.

“A funeral Mass is not a glorification of a person’s life, but rather an act of mercy for the dead during which we pray that, despite any failings in life, they may be received by a merciful God. We pray for all sexual abuse survivors and hope they can now find healing and peace,” said the statement.

The mass is scheduled to begin at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday. Weakland will be buried at St. Vincent Archabbey Cemetery in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.

I once looked up to my uncle, the Jesuit priest and teacher

– Then I discovered the monstrous truth

‘A common ploy was to move the perpetrator quietly away from the scene of his misdeed in the hope he would not reoffend.’

My uncle Peter had always been a bit of a character, peculiar but not without charm. Then a chance encounter with one of his former pupils opened my eyes to his dark past

By

On a summer evening in the first decade of the new millennium, I had arranged to meet a friend at a gastropub in London. I walked into the large, open-plan room, a crowd already at the counter. There was no sign of my friend, so I went to the bar to get a drink while I waited.

“You next?” asked the man beside me. He had traces of silver in his hair, somewhere in his 50s. “No, after you,” I said, before we started to chat. I told him my name. I wasn’t expecting what came next.

“Not related to Peter Orr by any chance? The priest?”

“Well, yes, he was my uncle,” I told him, as an age-old sense of embarrassment began to well up inside me.

“Not a connection I’d be proud of, if I were you,” said my new acquaintance who, it turned out, had been a pupil during the 1960s at Wimbledon College, the Jesuit school in south-west London where my uncle had taught and where, I was told over the bar-room chatter, he had gained a reputation as a man with a predilection for young boys.

Stunned but not altogether surprised, I listened, wanting the conversation to end. I looked around for my friend who, fortunately, had just arrived. I ordered two pints and said goodbye.

Uncle Peter – Father Peter Orr – was my father’s elder brother. Peter, whose visits to my childhood home near Dublin I loathed. Peter, a teacher and pedant: he once returned a letter I’d dutifully written to him from boarding school with my grammar and spelling mistakes circled in red ink. Eccentric Peter, who so embarrassed me as a teenager by recounting our family history to strangers on buses and in cafes. Peter, the serial paedophile, it turns out.

News of Peter’s death in 2010 reached me via emails from my mother in Ireland and a cousin in Australia. My family and I had just arrived in Darjeeling after a week of trekking in the Himalayas, a last hurrah before the end of my 11-year stint as a foreign correspondent in south Asia. I remember thinking the former colonial outpost would have been a place where my uncle – indeed his whole family – might have felt at home. The seven children – my father included – had grown up in what was then Malaya where my grandfather was a rubber planter between the two world wars.

On the last occasion I saw Peter – a dinner at home with my wife in London – he presented me with a military swagger stick belonging to his uncle, who had drowned when his ship was torpedoed off the coast of Italy in the first world war. Thinking there might be more heirlooms to be had after his death, I rang the Jesuit house in Preston, Lancashire, where he lived during his later years, introducing myself as his only nephew.

“We’ve got rid of all his belongings,” said the priest who had taken the call, “there’s nothing left for you.” No condolences were offered. I remember thinking it was as if the residents of the house wanted to cleanse themselves of all memory of Peter Dennis Orr SJ. He had died, after a period of ill health, at the age of 85.


It was only after some years, remembering the conversation with the man in the London pub, that I thought to do an internet search on my uncle. There I found a two-part blog by another former pupil at Wimbledon College, the first part of which was entitled, “In which the author does an unsatisfactory dance on the grave of Father Peter Orr SJ and fails yet again to single-handedly destroy the Roman Catholic church.”

Beyond declaring a visceral hatred for Peter Orr, the teachers and the Catholic church in general, the writer is vague in his accusations. “I’m sure he never touched me or acted out of propriety [sic],” he writes, “although he was famous for coming into the showers after rugby and insisting the boys drop their towels.” While my uncle seems to have been instrumental in the author’s expulsion from the school, there is a vagueness about that, too: “In March 1968, a few months before my O-levels, I was expelled after losing my temper in the classroom and telling Father Orr to fuck off and that if he came anywhere near me I’d hit him. I’ve truly no idea how it came to that.”

The second part of the blog is potentially more damning. In it, the writer says he has heard from a man in the US who, in the course of trying to track down “a priest who had abused him in Philadelphia in the early 1980s”, came across an obituary of Father Peter Orr whom he thought he recognised from the accompanying photograph. This was the priest, the American believed, who had “groomed” him, then “started coming round” to his home while his mother was out.

The blogger wonders if he has somehow been “in denial” about interference he may have suffered at school. This he dismisses: “The abuse I received was not sexual, just a continued brutal assault on my mind, body and spirit.”

A comment on the first part of the blog bolsters the charges against my uncle. “Orr was barking,” the commenter writes, “with an uncontrollable temper. I saw him attack a child once and break his glasses on his face.”


Despite what I’d read, I hesitated about what to do next. I mentioned the blog to a cousin in Canada who implored me to let it rest. Her ailing mother, Alison – the last surviving Orr sibling – would be devastated by the allegations. I remembered how upset Alison had been by Peter’s behaviour when, some years earlier, she’d come to Ireland to assist with the funeral arrangements for their sister Daphne. There was a story about his drunkenly fondling one of her friends after the service. The unfortunate woman lost an earring in a tussle with my uncle on a sofa. Alison, horrified, promptly returned to Canada. In deference to my cousin’s concerns about her mother’s failing health, I dropped the matter.

It was not until late last year, with the last of the Orr siblings dead, that I resolved to call the Jesuits.

My first point of contact was Father Paul Nicholson, the socius of the order in Britain – the deputy provincial, or second-in-command. Although I’d been brought up a Catholic, I’d long ago fallen by the wayside, forgetting much of what I’d once known about the church. The Society of Jesus – as the Jesuits are officially called – is the largest Catholic order of men in the world and has its headquarters in Rome. It was founded by a Spanish priest, Ignatius of Loyola, in 1540 and is today, according to the website of the order in Britain, engaged in “evangelisation and apostolic ministry” in more than 100 countries.

David Orr with his uncle Peter in 2001, Enniskerry, County Wicklow, Ireland
‘Peter would summon a meeting perhaps once a year’: David Orr with his uncle in 2001, in Enniskerry, County Wicklow, Ireland.

The Js, as my mother always called them, have been particularly big in education, helping form – as they see it – “the whole person”, mind, body and spirit. Despite our family connections, I was sent to a boarding school run by the Benedictines (who also practised corporal punishment on their charges, though reputedly with less gusto than the Jesuits).

I explained to Nicholson that I wanted to learn more about my uncle. He said it wasn’t possible to release the personal files of members of the order until 40 years after their deaths but sent me my uncle’s CV and asked if he could be of further help.

I hadn’t been quite prepared to find myself talking to one of the top Jesuits in the country, someone who from the outset seemed quite open and helpful. When I told him about the allegations online against my uncle, the socius offered to “have a word with the provincial”, his superior and head of the Jesuit order in Britain. A while later, I was back on the phone with Nicholson who conceded that “several reports” of sexual abuse by Peter Orr had been received.

I recalled my uncle’s musty smell and felt nauseous. While he was not someone to whom I felt particularly close, he was – besides my mother – the only person who really kept alive the memory of the father I’d never known. Unlike his other siblings, all living abroad by the time I was a teenager, he often came to Ireland and made an effort to stay in touch. He’d loved my father (“Your poor Daddy”) and, for that, I was grateful.


Peter Orr existed on the periphery of my family’s life in Ireland, making occasional appearances at the house in County Dublin where, until my final year of university, I lived with my mother, her second husband, their two children and my grandmother. In my younger days, I found his visits tedious. From time to time he took me on tours of dusty libraries and gloomy churches. He presented improving books – encyclopedias and dictionaries – with exhortations to studiousness. As I grew older, I came to see him as a bit of a character, a peculiar person but not without some Dickensian charm and academic allure. He enjoyed talking about books and travel, and if his views on the world were doctrinaire, I was relieved he never took me to task on my lack of religious faith.

Like some, though not all, of his siblings, Peter Orr seemed a rather sad individual. They never had much of a home life, having been packed off at a young age to boarding school in Ireland or the UK. Once, when their parents returned home from Malaya, the children failed to recognise them. Peter and his elder brother George subsequently joined the Jesuits in Britain. Daphne tried to become a nun but was rejected; another sister, Cynthia, suffered from depression and ended up in a care home in Northern Ireland. Two sisters were considered “normal” by my mother: Marjorie, who had married and emigrated to Australia with her husband and daughters, and Alison, who had married in Canada and had one daughter. My father, Tony, my mother stressed, had also been loving and “normal”, despite having had a tough time at the hands of the priests and nuns into whose care he’d been entrusted by his absent parents. He died when I was a few months old.

Peter Orr would summon a meeting perhaps once a year, sometimes turning up on the doorstep, other times waiting for me in a pub. I remember him in my childhood wearing dreary clerical garb, though in his senior years he took to sporting odd outfits, including a garish Hawaiian shirt and an Australian bush hat. In his 60s and 70s, he called to mind Anthony Hopkins.

“No hurry with the dinner, dear,” my uncle would say to my wife when he came for dinner. “I’d like another drink.” His rendition of postprandial Irish ballads could be entertaining, his defence of Irish Republican extremism and his diatribes against Islam less so.

Over the years, he sent postcards inscribed with his ornate Gothic script. They came from all over the world: Spain, Portugal, France, the US, Canada, Australia and of course Malaysia where he’d spent his childhood. I’ve kept many of them, curiosities for their stilted syntax as much as for their calligraphy. “I much enjoyed our far-ranging pow-wow, not to speak of the toothsome repast,” he wrote in 1999 on a card showing an advertisement for interwar cruises of India and Ceylon, “and it was good to set eyes on my one and only grand-nephew, who looks a true-blue Celt of Aryan stock.” Having paid tribute to my son’s perceived racial purity, he saluted our departure for New Delhi where I’d been posted as a correspondent, wishing us “bon voyage to the bright and colourful Orient; so, adieu for the nonce!”

At some point around then, my mother heard through his dour brother George that Peter Orr had been grounded in the UK by his order, the British Province of the Society of Jesus. Too much gallivanting, she assumed. Peter’s fondness for foreign travel and strong drink was no secret. We learned that, to fund his lifestyle, he’d been cadging money from well-heeled former schoolmates. “A disgrace to the cloth,” my mother reproved, though the extent of his wrongdoing was beyond our imagining.


Accusations of sexual abuse against priests and cover-ups by the Catholic hierarchy first began to receive media and public attention in the 1990s. Cases, often alleging abuse carried out years or decades earlier, appeared in the British and Irish press. A series of popes, from the turn of the millennium onwards, issued apologies and condemned the evil of abuse which, they admitted, had often been hidden by the church. Yet back then it never occurred to us that Peter Orr – for all his faults – was one of the abusers.

It was not until I was put in touch with the Jesuits’ safeguarding officer in the UK, Jo Norman, that I learned the full extent of my uncle’s depredations. Norman, who has since moved on from her role, told me the Jesuits had received numerous complaints “of a sexual nature” against my uncle, including some in schools. Most of these came from the UK and Ireland, and these are the only ones officially listed in the Jesuits’ records, though it seems there were others from farther afield.

“Some of the complaints were of the voyeuristic type,” she said, “wanting to look at boys in the showers and swimming naked. But there were also elements of lying naked with boys, sexual touching and passionate kissing.”

The first two cases against my uncle date to 1962 in Ireland, according to Norman. They involved boys under 12 whom he subjected to “spanking on the bare bottom and passionate kissing on the lips”. The complaints, it seems, were made by the boys’ parents and reported to the Garda Síochána (Irish police), though no prosecution was brought.

John McManus, head of communications for the Jesuits, says the first incident he can find in the records involved Peter Orr – “overzealous with discipline” – spanking a boy’s bare bottom at Wimbledon College in 1965. (I managed to track down the former pupil who suffered this violation aged 14 – he confirms the details.)

The next complaint was made when my uncle was filling in for an absent priest in Ireland in 1995. Again, the garda was involved and, again, the case was dropped. Peter Orr was at this stage officially based at Campion House, a Jesuit college in Osterley, west London, which has since been closed. In 1999, my uncle was once more interviewed by the garda, this time about “an alleged indecent assault” against a young man in the 1970s, though not reported until the close of the millennium. The Jesuits say that, in all reported cases, it was the police who decided not to take action against my uncle. My request to the garda for access to its records of related interviews was turned down.

Illustration of a small dark figure in front of the outline of a priest with a devil's tail coming out of his dog collar
‘It was not until I was put in touch with the Jesuits’ safeguarding officer that I learned the full extent of my uncle’s depredations.’

When confronted by his superiors, it seems, Peter Orr not only confessed to various “relationships with young people” (Norman’s words) but attempted to justify them by talking of “love”. He admitted to involvement with numerous boys under 16 on five continents. He also acknowledged a problem with alcohol which, Norman speculates, would have helped reduce any inhibitions he might have felt.

This was the moment the Jesuits first took action. In 1999, he was put on “a safety plan”, under the terms of which he was withdrawn from ministry, ordered to stay away from children and told to remain in the UK. Specifically, he was told not to travel to Ireland.

But Peter Orr broke out and continued to travel widely. Norman says he “refused to abide by the plan”. By 2001, he was back in Ireland, “engaged in some pastoral work in the counties of Wexford and Carlow”, according to one of his postcards. After that, as his cards attest, there were chaplaincies in Spain and Bosnia, pastoral postings in Gibraltar, holidays and tourist ministries on the Costa del Sol.

Not surprisingly, the complaints continued to come. In all, Norman said she knew of 11. The Jesuits have a whole dossier on him – it’s what they call “a red file”. When I asked if I could see it, they declined, saying it contained information about people who had not given their permission for it to be shared.

What seems clear is that Peter Orr’s superiors had very little idea how to deal with him. Like other Catholic orders, the Jesuits preferred to handle such cases in-house, only rarely referring the matter up to Rome. A ploy common to many orders was to move the perpetrator quietly away from the scene of his misdeed in the hope he would not reoffend. In my uncle’s case, it was clearly his choice to move around, despite efforts to ground him. Nonetheless, he must have been facilitated – unwittingly or not – by friends and contacts within the clergy. Otherwise, how could he have indulged his peripatetic lifestyle and secured all those short-term posts abroad?


The last reported case against my uncle was in 2006, four years before his death, when he was found to have “young men coming to his room” in Preston. He was, the safeguarding officer said, “a prolific offender”.

How should we talk about those whom he abused, I wonder aloud during one of several telephone calls. Norman suggests using “victim-survivor”.

It’s a term I’ve earlier come across on the Jesuits’ website. The main page is resolutely feelgood with videos of smiling priests and young people taking contemplative walks in the countryside. But there’s also a section on safeguarding which says the Jesuits “are committed to achieving justice for victim-survivors of abuse, as well as their care and support”.

The Jesuits acknowledge “serious failures in the past, both in terms of abuse perpetrated by clergy, religious, and laity engaged in Church works, and of the often-inadequate responses of Church authorities to victim-survivors.” They say they “deeply regret” their failures and recognise that “the resulting abuse crisis has gravely damaged many people”.

Norman says she’s been in contact over recent years with three of my uncle’s victims who are suffering “real psychological distress” as a result of their treatment at his hands. When I express concern about their welfare, she tells me they have all been offered counselling or therapy to help them process the trauma.

Were the victims of abuse by priests compensated, I ask. “Compensation is not always about money,” she says. She doesn’t know about any financial compensation having been offered to my uncle’s victims, though he was persuaded to apologise to at least one of them. And the provincial in Britain, Damian Howard, made a personal apology to another of Peter Orr’s victims.

The most important thing, Norman says, is that survivor-victims should feel they’ve been listened to: “It’s about being heard and believed.” One of my uncle’s victims, she reveals, reported his abuse to another priest who “silenced” the truth for years.

The complaints against my uncle were among more than 900 involving about 3,000 instances of child sexual abuse by priests and others connected to the Catholic church between 1970 and 2015. These complaints were cited in the 2020 Roman Catholic Church Investigation Report, part of a continuing inquiry into child sexual abuse in England and Wales launched in 2014. In the reporting period, there were 177 prosecutions resulting in 133 convictions, though, as the report states, the problem continues with more than 100 reported allegations each year since 2016.

While the Catholic church is doing much to put its house in order, those working on the frontlines of support for victims of sex abuse believe that more needs to be done to sanction priests who commit sexual offences.

“Even today, priests are virtually untouchable as far as the law is concerned,” I’m told by Jon Bird of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, a British organisation that supports recovery from childhood abuse. “The Jesuits and other orders should report offending priests but generally they don’t.”


The Society of Jesus has been honest and transparent in its dealings with me and I commend the support, however limited, offered to victims of sex abuse by priests. But the fact remains the Jesuits kept my uncle within their fold for more than half a century, knowing he was abusing or likely to abuse children all over the world. Their unwillingness – or inability – to discipline and restrain their charge enabled him to extend his predatory reach far and wide. When they realised their sanctions were failing, they did little to contain him and sought no outside support to rein him in.

To all this, they said, in a statement: “If the Jesuits had been aware of Father Orr’s activities, they would have taken immediate action. When they were informed of the incidents that had taken place in Ireland (at least one of which the garda investigated), the Jesuits banned Father Orr from travelling there and having unsupervised contact with anyone under the age of 18. They placed further restrictions on Father Orr’s public ministry in 2003.”

It went on: “The Jesuits deeply regret that concerns about Father Orr were not followed up more insistently in 1965, and they extend their sympathies and prayers to the victims of his abuse. Such allegations would now be treated very differently to how they were 57 years ago. Any allegations of abuse by Jesuits are immediately reported to the police in line with the policy of the Catholic church in this country, and safeguarding issues are taken extremely seriously.”


We’ll never know exactly how many young people suffered at my uncle’s hands (the 11 reported cases against him are, in the words of the safeguarding officer, undoubtedly “the tip of the iceberg”). The truth, of course, is rarely simple or clearcut and there was only so much I was able to find out about him. For this piece I talked to several of his former pupils at Wimbledon College. While all confirmed his reputation for being attracted to boys, none laid specific charges against him. He was widely seen as “a bit of an oddball”. One old boy, who later taught alongside him, remembers him as having been professional in his duties.

I was unable to substantiate the allegation of abuse in Philadelphia made in the “dance on the grave” blog and the blogger seems to have died some years back. Jesuit records show my uncle made several trips of varying duration to the US in the 80s and 90s, though there is no mention of time spent in Pennsylvania state. Curiously, there was another paedophile Jesuit with the same surname and middle initial – Garrett D Orr – preying on boys in that part of the US at about that time. Garrett Orr was convicted in 2011, having pleaded guilty to multiple sexual offences in neighbouring Maryland.

One of my uncle’s former students, who runs a Facebook group for old Wimbledon College pupils, urged me to drop my investigation. But others, such as Bird – himself a survivor of abuse – encouraged me. “Many abused people are afraid no one will believe them if they speak out,” he said. “It’s important to say that these things did happen. The more we acknowledge them, the easier it is for survivors to move on with their lives.”


“Dum vivimus, vivamus!” Peter Orr signed off a postcard from Edinburgh at the turn of the millennium. “While we live, let us live.” It is now clear that he took this epicurean declaration to heart, putting his own pleasure before the needs and wellbeing of those in his care. Peter Orr led his life trampling on key teachings of his church and on the lives of vulnerable young people who had every reason to regard him as a guide and mentor. In betraying their trust, he undoubtedly consigned some to a lifetime of grief and distress.

As for myself, I’ve struggled over what I feel about my uncle. He was perhaps the closest embodiment of the father I lost at a very young age. My wife believes I feel angrier and more betrayed by his behaviour than I can admit. Where I might have had a role model and a worthy replacement for my father, I had neither. I’ve wondered if, in writing about him, I might have been impelled by some forlorn feeling of revenge. I don’t want to dance on my uncle’s grave – I have no intention of visiting it. I would, however, like to think of him turning uncomfortably in it, now that his story is finally out.

Complete Article HERE!

Pope rules out sex assault inquiry into Canada cardinal

Cardinal Marc Ouellet was once considered a strong candidate to be pope

Pope Francis has ruled out a formal church investigation into a sexual assault claim against Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet after a preliminary inquiry found no basis for one, the Vatican said Thursday.

Ouellet, himself once considered a strong candidate to be pope, was named in court documents this week relating to a class action suit targeting more than 80 members of the clergy in the archdiocese of Quebec.

The 78-year-old is accused of abusing a female intern, identified only as “F”, from 2008 to 2010, when he was archbishop of Quebec.

In the Vatican’s first public response to the civil suit, spokesman Matteo Bruni said a “preliminary investigation” already ordered by Pope Francis had found there were “no elements to initiate a trial”.

He said the pontiff again consulted the author of that probe, a Father Jacques Servais, and was told again that there were no grounds for opening a formal investigation.

“Following further relevant consultations, Pope Francis declares that there are insufficient elements to open a canonical investigation for sexual assault by Cardinal Ouellet against person F,” the statement said.

‘Chased after’

Ouellet is a prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, one of the most important functions within the Curia, the government of the Vatican.

The claims against him in the civil suit, which the Quebec supreme court ruled could go ahead in May, are among the testimonies of 101 people who say they were sexually assaulted by members of the clergy and church staff from 1940 to today.

They emerged just weeks after Pope Francis visited Canada, where he apologised for the decades-long abuse of Indigenous children in Catholic-run residential schools.

So far, the cardinal is not facing criminal charges.

Ouellet’s accuser claims the cardinal assaulted her multiple times — kissing her, “forcefully” massaging her shoulders, and once sliding his hand along her back to her buttocks.

She says she had the feeling of being “chased after”, according to the documents. When the woman tried to raise the issue, she was told she was not the only woman to have such a “problem” with Ouellet, documents show.

It was not until 2020 that F., who says she was also sexually abused by another cleric, spoke to the Quebec church’s sex abuse advisory committee.

It recommended she write to the pope, who in 2021 responded by nominating Servais to look into the case. She had not yet been told of his conclusions.

According to Thursday’s Vatican statement, Servais said he had interviewed the woman via Zoom in the presence of a member of the committee.

He was quoted as saying that neither in her report to the pope, nor in the testimony he heard, “did this person make an accusation that would provide material for such an investigation”.

In February, Ouellet opened a Vatican symposium on the priesthood by apologising for “unworthy” clergy and the cover-up of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, before an audience that included Pope Francis.

“We are all torn and humbled by these crucial questions that every day question us as members of the Church,” Ouellet said at the time.

He said the symposium was an opportunity to express regret and ask victims for forgiveness, after their lives were “destroyed by abusive and criminal behaviour” that was hidden or treated lightly to protect the institution and the perpetrators.

Since becoming pope in 2013, Francis has sought to tackle the decades-long sexual abuse scandals, although many activists against paedophilia insist much more needs to be done.

Complete Article HERE!