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Considering six thousand priests have been identified in the U.S. so far as pedophiles (source BishopAccountability), and experts report most pedophiles have at least ten victims, there are at least sixty thousand adult victims of pedophile priests in the USA today and more adult victims coming forward every day in Europe.
How many survivors will it take to fill St. Peter’s Square the last Sunday in October this year?
Longtime activists, Bernie McDaid and Olan Horne were in the group of three victims who met with the Pope during his April 2008 visit to the US, and now they are organizing this Vatican October 31, 2010, Reformation Day, project. Horne and McDaid hope the event will evoke the substantive response they both expected from the Vatican, after their much ballhyooed publicly related 2008 private five-minute meetings with Pope Benedict. The time is ripe to take further steps, McDaid says.
“Until two months ago, the average person would not have thought the pedophile priest problem goes all the way to the Pope,” McDaid said in an interview last week by phone from Massachusetts. “Now they know, and even the most devout Catholic is beginning to ask questons.”
He hopes 50,000 survivors will come to the Vatican 10/31/10, but considering the economy and travel costs, McDaid and Horne hope the project will have coinciding events in the USA. He envisions a powerful image.
“Our numbers will speak words. At the Vatican we’re going to wear all white, white shirts, white pants.”
Victims Still Need Healing and Empowerment
“Some people are saying do it simultaneously,” McDaid said. “Have the churches open up on Sunday Halloween October 31st. As a day of reformation for victims who have not been heard, we’re going to the Vatican with the real issue now, we are victims, we need healing, empowerment, we’re taking the statement of this day on our own.
Horne and McDaid also started the first support group for victims of Joseph Birmingham in the early days of the Boston scandal. Now they both are alarmed that two years after the meeting with the Pope during his 2008 U.S. visit, nothing substantive has resulted.
Victims Are Doing Worse Than They Ever Did Before
“All the other men in Boston that stood up publicly are now doing worse than they ever did before. No one is reaching out to them. Some are homeless living in YMCAs, drinking themselves to death.”
So McDaid says, October 31, 2010, survivors “offer this opportunity to the Church: Open up your doors and say you’re sorry.
“There are men from the original group that came forward in Boston, none of them are getting the help that they need.”
(ME: And About a hundred thousand more out here in the hinterlands calling out)
“We are not protesting or marching on that day,” McDaid says. “I’m calling on priests, people, anybody who has anything to say about the issue to come forward on that day.”
People Inside the Church Have Not Been Heard Either
Ext. Vatican, ready to fill w/victims
He hopes to see an “outpouring of people going to the church,” said McDaid, “the people who love and still are in the Church, they have not been heard either. Because the hierarchy keep blocking them. So this is their day, our day, and we’re asking all priests to join with us.
McDaid envisions the image that will go out in global news:
“Our numbers will speak words. At the Vatican we’re going to wear all white, white shirts, white pants.”
Bernie Was First Survivor To Be Thrown Out of Vatican
(McDaid told me about the time he went to the Vatican on his own in 2003, in his own words:)
The guards threw me out, well, escorted me out. So I snuck back in through a back room. I was on my way to try to meet one of the head bishops. No one would meet with us, I think because once they talked tous, they’d have to say something about us, and they were trying to avoid the issue, avoid going on the record.
I’m the first victim to meet with representatives of the Vatican
I went through these bronze doors, told them we had a meeting. Got as far as Brother John, the gatekeeper, he has an office on the second floor. He told me he himself has only once in seven years been up to the third floor to meet his own executives.
People Were Threatening Suicide with the Story Just Breaking
(In Bernie McDaid’s own words, continued:)
We asked Brother John to let us in to meet Cardinal Law and the Pope about Boston. People were threatening suicide with the story just breaking.
I wrote a book on this, I’m looking for a publisher.
Before we left Boston, all these Catholics gave me beads and things to wish me luck. That night, I’m in my hotel room, there had been news cameras following us all day. I said, oh my god I’m scared. I pulled out those beads out of my pocket, I took them and I prayed. Ii prayed out of fear.
Then next morning I got the idea to get in touch with a friend back in Massachusetts, a judge, and he made a phone call, and he got a meeting with the Vatican.
The Vatican Came to My Hotel
(Bernie McDaid in His Own Words Cont’d.:)
People’s intentions in Boston were for me to get in and next morning the Vatican came to my hotel.
The Secretary of State, the Nuncio, an Archbishop from Philadelphia, who at the time was like the Secretary of the State, whatever he is called, an Italian word.
He came to my hotel with another priest. They were both nervous. He said, we’ve never had orders come from as high as this and I laughed, I mean i just called my friend and he called the Pope. They were looking at me like how did this guy orchestrate this.
I said want a cup of tea, let’s talk.
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Click headline below to read this story on AlterNet in SoapBox:
INTERVIEW: Bernie McDaid Plans Vatican Event 10/31/2010 as Adult Victims of Pedophile Priests Still Need Help, Healing
Posted 11:49 am, April 12, 2010 COMMENT NOW!
Considering six thousand priests have been identified in the U.S. so far as pedophiles (source BishopAccountability), and experts report most pedophiles have at least ten victims, there are at least sixty thousand adult victims of pedophile priests in the USA today and more adult victims coming forward every day in Europe. How many survivors will it take to fill St. Peter’s Square the last Sunday in October this year? Lontgime activists, Bernie McDaid and Olan Horne were in the group of three victims who met with the Pope during his April 2008 visit to the US, and now they are organizing this Vatican October 31, 2010, Reformation Day, project. Horne and McDaid hope the event will evoke the substantive response they both expected from the Vatican, after their much ballhooed publicly related 2008 private five-minute meetings with Pope Benedict. The time is ripe to take further steps, McDaid says....
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Click above headline to read entire story, which is running on AlterNet Page One in SoapBox for next few hours
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From Kay Ebeling, Producer, The City of Angels Is Everywhere
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