Clerical abuse survivor, bishop’s stories give hope at prayer service held for victims (Child Abuse Awareness Month)
Mark Joseph Williams told those gathered for an April 22 Hope and Healing prayer service at St. Anastasia Church a story about his 2011 visit to his hometown’s Catholic cemetery where his journey of forgiveness began.
He first visited his parents’ graves. He lost his father when he was 12; his mother 23 years later. Then, he stopped at the grave of the father of a childhood friend. That death, Williams said, is embedded in his mind as he was killed by a motorist just after Williams and his friend made their first Holy Communion in 1964. All these years later, after the years of pain that followed, the Eucharist is still alive in him, Williams told the crowd.
He quoted the sentiments on his parents’ grave by American Catholic author Thomas Merton: “The world without storms and our lives without agony would give us nothing to grow on. Make us glad for stormy weather.”
Then, returning to his story, he recalled that he walked down a path to a grave he knew but had not visited before. It was the grave of his pastor and abuser who would have been 100 years old that day but had died 11 years earlier. On that cold winter day, he knew it was time to forgive him, and by doing so, to begin to let go of the abuse he had suffered as a young boy.
“To be free, to find the in-dwelling Christ, forgiveness had to exit my lips, to release the wild beast, to allow our premier guardian angel, the Christ, planted in me to flourish and bear the fruit of love for myself and going forward for others, especially other victims of clerical sexual abuse,” Williams said.
It was forgiveness; but not exoneration, Williams told the intimate crowd of clergy, laymen, victim–survivors, and their families.
Williams is a clerical abuse survivor and special advisor to Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, C.Ss.R., Archbishop of Newark, and the Archdiocese of Newark in addition to being a forensic social worker and management consultant. He is known for his commitment to the Catholic faith and his compassion for clerical-abuse victims as well as perpetrators. Williams and his wife, Karen, have four grown children and five grandchildren and are parishioners at Church of the Little Flower in Berkeley Heights.
The prayer service was just one of many efforts led by the Archdiocese of Newark Department for the Protection of the Faithful throughout April, which is Child Abuse Prevention Month. In its ongoing commitment to the ministry of protecting children from abuse, the department launched an awareness campaign, sponsored pinwheel gardens around Catholic school campuses, and created a Rosary for Healing video so the faithful can pray at home for the victims-survivors.
Speaking to the group outside the church in Teaneck, Auxiliary Bishop Michael Saporito recalled the peak of the clerical abuse crisis in 2018 when abuse was reported at about a handful of dioceses across the country, including neighboring Pennsylvania. Locally, Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop of Newark from 1986 to 2000, resigned and was later defrocked due to sexual abuse allegations against him. It was during this time that Bishop Saporito met a clerical abuse victim for the first time, he said.
“A survivor came forward to speak to me about it. In addition to the difference between having a conversation and meeting somebody, which obviously is very different than just reading stories about it, I knew the person,” Bishop Saporito said. “The whole thing just caught me by surprise.”
Over the next few months in 2018, beyond praying for those who had suffered, Bishop Saporito began attending and holding forums and prayer services. The evenings were not just about the stories of survivors, he said.
“It gave survivors the permission to come forward even more,” Bishop Saporito said.
It was at that time that Williams met Cardinal Tobin at an event at Fordham University. The cardinal has referred to that time as “probably the most difficult time of my life” following a summer of allegations of abuse committed by McCarrick. At that time, Williams approached Cardinal Tobin offering to help him address the crisis facing the Church in a way that would “promote healing of victim-survivors as well as the scandalized faithful,” the cardinal said, speaking at the United States Conference of Catholics Bishops (USCCB) Fall Plenary Assembly last November on the 20th anniversary of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, or The Dallas Charter. The USCCB’s 2002 charter established a comprehensive set of procedures for addressing allegations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy. The charter also includes guidelines for reconciliation, healing, accountability, and prevention of future acts of abuse.
For Williams, that encounter with Cardinal Tobin was a gift.
“Today, despite my experience, the real Church, the living faith community, has never been closer to me. Pope Francis; Cardinal Tobin; my spiritual director, Monsignor George Deas; and many other good priests, religious, and lay friends of faith, including many survivors, have shown me that the Church is truly the mystical body of Christ. It is His flesh,” Williams said.
With thoughtful and sincere words, Bishop Saporito apologized to the victim-survivors and to the faithful overall.
“Sorry you had to endure that. I’m sorry you had to put up with the memories, the shame, the feelings that maybe have gone on for years. I am sorry for the people that didn’t listen to you, didn’t pay attention to you, maybe didn’t think what you had to say was even true,” the bishop said. “We failed and we know it. We failed and we know it because you had the courage to tell your stories. So, I’m humbled to be here today to have this opportunity to welcome you, but also to say we want to take the next steps forward. We want to accompany whatever healing that we can together at your pace, the way that you want to, and in respect of you.”
The Archdiocese of Newark wants to make our churches safe, the bishop continued, and work hard to make sure that it doesn’t happen to anyone again.
The Archdiocese of Newark is committed to helping survivors of childhood sexual abuse heal. Gina Criscuolo, the Coordinator of the Office of Accompaniment, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, provides compassionate and supportive assistance to those who have been harmed in the church. Please visit www.rcan.org and click Safe Environment, or call 201-407-3256.
After the attendees joined in the prayer to St. Francis and sang the closing hymn “Take the word of God with you,” they were handed blue pinwheels, which they planted around the church grounds.
“The pinwheels celebrate the joy and innocence of childhood that each child should experience,” said Gina Criscuolo, Coordinator for the Office of Accompaniment. The pinwheel gardens or displays demonstrate an outward commitment to abuse prevention, she said.
Williams said he is hopeful.
“People who were abused as children can heal, and the healing of this scandal in our Church must be woven into the fabric of today’s broken yet beloved Church,” he said. “The Church must unleash the voices of survivors, especially during this synodal time.”
Director Karen Clark said that more Hope and Healing prayer services will be planned in the archdiocese’s other three counties — Union, Essex, and Hudson.
