SAN DIEGO (CA)
Union-Tribune
By Sandi Dolbee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
December 28, 2003
There were poinsettias on the altar area in the front of the church, along with three small lighted Christmas trees. But there was something else there too, something that suggested this was going to be no ordinary Saturday evening Mass.
Standing to one side was a white cross with photographs of children and young people on it – faces of minors who had been sexually abused by priests.
“This wounds all of us,” the Rev. Joseph Spieler told the 60 or so people last night at Christ the King Roman Catholic Church in the Logan Heights neighborhood of San Diego. “This burdens all of us. It disconcerts all of us. It distresses all of us.”
The idea for focusing last night’s regularly scheduled Mass on the ongoing sexual abuse scandal came from parishioners seeking to do something to help with the recovery, Spieler said.
The service was not about the legal issues or the social ramifications, he said. It was about spiritual solace for everyone hurting from “the profound betrayal of trust that we in the Church were not able to create child-safe zones, even in church.”
