Scottish Catholic Observer

People from across the world who have been abused by priests gathered outside the Vatican last Sunday to condemn the Catholic Church’s handling of the abuse crisis.

Several hundred victims of abuse and their families, demonstrated outside the Vatican before leading a candle-lit vigil.

“This isn’t an attack on faith or religion, it’s about behaviour and ethics,” Marco Lodo Rizzini, a spokesman for child victims of abuse from Italy’s Antonio Provolo institute for the deaf, said.

Sixty-seven deaf-mute children at the Catholic institute in the city of Verona were allegedly abused by priests and lay staff between the 1950s and 1980s.

“Society has failed to address the problem of child abuse by priests, but we can’t let this go unresolved, it’s time to act,” Bernie McDaid, co-founder of the US group Survivors Voice that was behind the event, said.

Among the protestors was Sue Cox, 63, from Warwickshire, England who spoke about her rape ordeal at the hands of a priest.

Protestors came from a dozen countries, including Italy, the US, Ireland, the Netherlands and Australia.

Italian paramilitary police blocked a boulevard leading to the Vatican to prevent marchers reaching St Peter’s Square, but later allowed two protesters to leave letters from victims at the Holy See’s doorstep.

At a briefing before the march, Ms Cox was among participants who stood up one by one to tell how their lives had been damaged by the abuse they suffered as children.

“For 50 years I thought I was the only person in the entire world that had been abused by a Catholic priest,” she said. “Raped by a Catholic priest, not abused, because what he did was rape me and rape is different.”