All Saints, All Wounds

Last week the Church celebrated All Saints' Day, followed by All Souls' Day. We remembered the holy ones who came before us — the canonized and the quiet alike — and we prayed for those who have died.

I want to talk about a group of people who fall into neither category but who deserve our attention: the living wounded.

They are the survivors of clergy sexual abuse and their families. They are the Catholics who left because the Church's response to the crisis felt hollow. They are the parishioners who stayed but whose trust was broken and never fully repaired. They are the priests who did nothing wrong but carry the stigma of an institution that failed to police itself.

CCOC was born in the aftermath of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report. That document, released in August 2018, named over 300 priests and identified more than a thousand child victims across six dioceses, including Pittsburgh. It was a devastating accounting. And for many of us, it was a turning point — the moment when silence stopped being an option.

Seven years later, I worry about the quiet. Not the quiet of healing — that kind of quiet has its place — but the quiet of moving on. The quiet of hoping that enough time has passed, that enough structural changes have been made, that we can close this chapter.

We cannot close this chapter. Not because we should wallow in grief, but because the conditions that allowed the abuse to happen — unchecked clerical authority, insufficient transparency, a culture of deference over accountability — have not been fully addressed.

Our focus group on Supporting Abuse Victims/Survivors and Their Families, coordinated by John Costantino, continues to work on ensuring that survivors have access to resources, that reporting mechanisms are robust, and that the diocese's child protection protocols aren't just policies on paper but living practices.

The Diocese of Pittsburgh maintains its Ethics Point reporting system and its Office for the Protection of Children, Youth and Vulnerable Adults. These are important. But institutional programs are only as strong as the culture that surrounds them. If the culture says "that was a long time ago," the programs lose their teeth.

As an architect, I know that maintenance is less dramatic than construction. Nobody holds a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a building inspection. But without maintenance, even the finest structure deteriorates.

This All Saints season, I'm asking my fellow Catholics to remember the living wounded. Call the diocese's reporting hotline number (1-888-808-1235) and save it in your phone. Ask your parish how it implements child protection training. Talk to your children and grandchildren about safety. And if you know a survivor, listen. Just listen.

The saints we celebrated last week weren't saints because they were comfortable. They were saints because they refused to look away.