ONE WAY TO HELP

Your generosity can help abuse survivors attend retreat for free

In my capacity as editor of The Evangelist, I receive a lot of emails about stories ideas, photo suggestions and my fair share of spam.

Last week, I received an interoffice email, as did all Pastoral Center employees, from Ann Marie Carswell, who is the process coordinator for the Dio­cesan Review Board and Assistance Office and the associate director of Safe Environment. Carswell is also a member of the dio­cesan Hope and Heal­ing Committee — along with Noelle Marie, diocesan assistance coordinator, Deacon Gary Riggi, Father Matthew Duclos, Mary Fay, associate director for Marriage Formation Ministry and Family Life coordinator of Pastoral Care Ministries and Kathy Barrans, director of Communications.

The work of the Hope and Healing Committee (www.rcda.org/hopeandhealing) is to address the needs and help survivors of abuse any way they can.

The email was look­ing for donations so that victims of sexual abuse by clergy could attend a retreat — preferably at no cost — hosted by a survivor-support organization called Awake Milwaukee.

In our Hope and Healing issue on April 27, Father Duclos talked about the good work that Awake Milwaukee does and he used the input of abuse survivors to shape a homily he wrote for one of the recent diocesan Hope and Healing Masses. The mission of Awake Milwaukee, which started in 2019 in a living room in Milwaukee, “is to awaken our community to the full reality of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and work for transformation and healing in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and beyond.”

I think the faithful in the Diocese of Albany are well aware of the “full reality.” Over 400 lawsuits involving alleged clergy sex abuse have been filed under the state’s Child Victims Act (CVA) against the Diocese of Albany. And last week the attorney general of Illinois released a 700-page report revealing decades of abuse by Catholic clergy against almost 2,000 children. OSV News said the report “concludes a multi-year investigation launched in 2018 into child sexual abuse by 451 clergy and religious brothers in all six Catholic dioceses in Illinois.”

And with the accepted statistics of 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men being sexually abused in their lifetimes, it is more than likely that we all know someone that has been abused.

That got me thinking. Though I may not have the professional tools to directly help someone who has been abused, I can help out financially. And that brings me back to the retreat Awake Milwaukee is hosting on July 21-23 at Cedar Valley Retreat Center in West Bend, Wisc. It is the group’s first in-person gathering of 22 abuse survivors from all over the U.S., and the group has figured out it will cost attendees $450 each and the entire cost of the weekend is expected to be $10,000. 

So far the group has raised $1,500 for the retreat. I am asking readers of The Evangelist to help any way they can — $5, $10, whatever you can afford — to help defray the costs for the attendees by logging on to this website: https://givebutter.com/retreatforsurvivors. The Evangelist will donate $450 to defray the cost of one attendee.

After all, what are our words without action!

Hope & Healing Masses: Once a month, a regularly scheduled parish Mass in one Vicariate (geographical region) of our Diocese will be devoted to the topic of healing from abuse and trauma. After Mass, there will be resources available for attendees, including counselors trained in abuse and trauma and information for local resources. The next Mass is set for June 4 at 11:15 a.m., at Our of Victory Church (55 North Lake Ave.) in Troy.