c. 2006 Religion News Service

NEEDHAM, Mass. ÆÂ? Hundreds of Boston-area Catholics have witnessed a rare sight this week (May 25-June 3): a cardinal of the church lying prostrate before them, begging forgiveness for the “sins and crimes” of abusive priests.

But this landmark ritual, repeated on nine consecutive nights at nine parishes where abusive acts took place in decades past, has elicited more trembling than triumph as a wounded diocese tries to take baby steps toward reconciliation.

Isabel McIntyre’s hands shook, for instance, as she recalled her abused daughter’s psychiatric hospitalization before a crowd of 400 worshippers here Tuesday (May 30) at St. Joseph Church. Moments later, an elderly priest’s arms quivered as he struggled to lay face-down in a gesture of humility alongside seven fellow clerics, including Boston’s Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley.

For Boston’s beleaguered archdiocese, this “novena” of prayer services on the eve of Pentecost has marked the first time church leaders have used a public ritual to apologize for the clergy sexual abuse crisis that erupted in January 2002.

During Tuesday’s service, O’Malley walked the church’s center aisle, passing a flame to candle-holding worshippers until each face glowed in the fragile flickering. Then, in what seemed to be a sort of exorcism, he prayed for the expulsion of “all that is not of God” and processed through the sanctuary, shaking droplets of holy water on bowed heads. A lilting tune played on the piano as congregants sang a repetitive chant. Attendees, mostly senior citizens, crossed themselves as O’Malley passed.

Some in attendance welcomed the symbol-rich event as a long-awaited step in the right direction.

“This is a beginning,” said Ed Wade, a church reform activist from Gloucester, Mass. “It was the first acknowledgment of wrongdoing (in which) there were no lawyers hanging on or writing the script.”

Others, however, found the message to be long on pageantry yet short on substance. Dale Walsh of Cambridge, who says defrocked priest Paul Shanley abused her more than 40 years ago, saw the series as a “public relations ploy” but attended nonetheless because she wanted to see O’Malley lie prostrate.

“What I really wanted to do was take my foot and press it on his head,” Walsh said. “I have a lot of anger.” O’Malley is the target, she says, because “he’s the church.”

For 41/2 years, the clergy abuse scandal and its painful aftermath have tormented greater Boston’s 2 million Catholics. Though the church has settled 895 claims against dozens of priests to the tune of $127.4 million, closure remains elusive. A budget crisis, exacerbated by the withholding of donations, has forced the closure of 62 of the diocese’s 365 parishes since May 2004.

And the clouds of scandal still loom. Just this month, O’Malley came under fire for allowing a Catholic hospital system executive to keep his job despite multiple allegations that he had sexually harassed female employees. The executive, Dr. Robert Haddad, was later forced to resign.

With this month’s novena tour, O’Malley is acknowledging the Boston church’s persistent woes and pleading for the Holy Spirit to intervene. The tour began May 25, at the Feast of the Ascension, which marks the moment when a resurrected Jesus Christ left his disciples and ascended to heaven. What was then “a moment of great confusion, pain and fear,” O’Malley told worshippers, gave way to great rejoicing 10 days later when the Spirit came at Pentecost. As then, he said, “the Lord … has not abandoned us. He has not left us as orphans.”

“We are stretching out the withered hand of the body of Christ and asking God to heal us,” O’Malley said. To abuse survivors and their families, he said, “We will forever be sorry for the harm you’ve suffered.”

Outside, some 15 protesters carried signs and handed out leaflets. They voiced two primary complaints ÆÂ? one, that O’Malley hasn’t supported proposed legislation in Boston to eliminate a statute of limitations, which has shielded some accused abusers from prosecution; and two, O’Malley hasn’t taken steps to make pul2l all names of diocesan priests “credibly accused” of abusive behavior.

“What gives him the right to think he can heal anybody?,” asked John Harris of Norwood, who says Shanley raped him in 1979.

(OPTIONAL TRIM BEGINS)

Some survivors remained even further away. Ann Hagan Webb, a psychologist and the New England coordinator for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said many survivors won’t enter a church because they associate the building and the rituals with the abuse they suffered. In her case, watching footage from the first service on television was a jarring experience.

“Seeing (O’Malley) prostrate on the floor with a bunch of priests sent me emotionally to the moon,” Webb says. “It took me a day to figure out why. It was because that was the position I was forced to take when I was raped” by a priest between the ages of 5 and 12. She’s now 53.

(OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS) But for some of those who attended, the event ushered in some long-awaited moments of joy. Having watched all the priests lie prostrate, one woman who identified herself as a survivor afterward hugged the Rev. Ronald Gariboldi, a priest at Holy Family Church in Gloucester.

“I was very moved,” Gariboldi said after the embrace. “That was the first time I had met a survivor” of clergy sexual abuse.

KRE/JL END MACDONALD

AP-NY-05-31-06 1716EDT