*
By Kay Ebeling
As a recent convert, Virginia Jones (pictured at right) was shocked to hear that a Franciscan brother at her parish was removed for pedophilia. She handed out copies of news articles and as she puts it, “Got thrown out of the parish.” But a new pastor reached out to Virginia, she returned to the church, and is now an advocate for child sex abuse survivors. She put together among other things, the first annual Walk Across Oregon in September 2008.
“We are walking through Wallowa Valley in August 2009,” Jones said, “where Chief Joseph made the ‘I will fight no more forever’ speech. We will walk through the same land that he was forced to leave.” The route includes campouts under waterfalls, and a route through rural towns in Northern Oregon.
“I was thrown out of my parish after advocating for abuse survivors,” Jones says, “but a compassionate Franciscan priest named Armando Lopez reached out to me along with other parishioners. What healed me was them welcoming me back to the parish.”
Today at Ascension Church in Portland, Jones helps run support meetings the second Saturday of every month from 10 to noon. Jones put together a screening of Hand of God two years ago that led to the organizing of Walk Across Oregon 2008 last September.
“We followed Old 99 along the I-Five. We had 15 people with us in, Portland, in Salem six. We went through Independence, Winston. We walked most of it. It’s hard because of the I-Five. The old 99 could be busy and fast in places.
“So many people came up and said thank you for what you're doing,” Jones said. “Some felt real healing. People will see you and talk to you awhile before telling you they're a survivor, or they know a survivor.”
They Saw wild turkeys and people panning for gold along the route this year. There’s lots of tourists in Oregon in the summer - so next year’s walk should reach even more people. And it’s a reason to get out of the heat in mid-summer.
I Will Fight No More Forever
At left - when they encountered freeways, the Walk Across Oregon last September had to hop on a van to cross areas where no pedestrian could possibly cross. In August 2009 the second Walk Across Oregon will spend a month hiking and camping in small towns in the north state, with several nights spent at waterfalls. Watch for news updates beginning next spring.
Virginia Jones believes God has put her where she is for a reason, at Ascension Church in Portland, Oregon, she educating parishioners and Oregonians at large about child sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.
Isn’t It Ironic File:
For Raping Boys, we can turn our backs, but steal our money?
The priest forced sex on teenager boys for years, one crime victim filed charges as an adult that the clergyman essentially paid him hush money, close to $50 thousand dollars over time, to keep quiet about the rapes and their shared use of drugs. As a result Rev. Charles Newman will go to trial in early 2009, not for serial ephebophilia, but for embezzlement of $900K from the Archbishop Ryan High school in Philadelphia. Three former students have accused Newman publicly, they estimate 25 other victims of what the Inquirer calls his “illicit relationships,” but last December the Philadelphia Grand Jury only brought down charges for “misappropriated funds.”
You are a Homosexual? Leave the priesthood immediately. You are a pedophile, the archdiocese sends you on an paid vacation
The California election moved one parish priest to deliver a sermon saying he believed in gay marriage last month, in fact he was gay himself. Within days Fresno Bishop John T. Steinbock removed the former Fr. now Mr. Geoffrey Farrow, 50, as pastor of the St. Paul Newman Center on a Cal State campus, saying, "Your statement contradicted the teaching of the Catholic Church and has brought scandal to your parish community as well as the whole Church." Steinbock was the auxiliary bishop in Orange County CA who welcomed serial pedophile Fr. Richard Coughlin when the archdiocese of Boston sent him to Orange, CA. Steinbock arranged an instant vacation for Fr. Eleuterio Ramos after he admitted raping teenagers at Immaculate Heart of Mary in Santa Ana.
But no way could Bishop Steinbock of Fresno tolerate a homesexual priest.
Nationwide Altar Boys Groped Before Mass, in city after city the same M-O.
If anyone doubts Catholic priests have a special and unique open access to children because of being Catholic priests, consider this from a recent conversation with a former altar boy.
“There’s a whole ritual they do before Mass when they get dressed. The altar boys help them dress. The cassock you hold it up like helping somebody on with a coat, then the boy holds up the sash. The priests kiss the sash before they put it on. We were in the sacristy five minutes before mass, and as I'm standing back against this closet, he goes to tuck in my shirt”
This happened more than once, more than a dozen times.
I hear scenes like the one above over and over again when talking to former altar boys AND altar girls. This was organized crime, serial felonies, aided and abetted by a national pedophile network that operated freely inside archdioceses all across the country.
In there was ever a need for RICO investigations, the Roman Catholic Church in the USA is ripe for one.
-------
PLUS CAMPING UNDER WATERFALLS!!!
Onward. . .
In 2009 our ongoing coverage of the pedophile epidemic in the Catholic Church will be at http://cityofangels5.blogspot.com/ .
Read more stories by Kay Ebeling, LA city buzz Examiner at http://www.examiner.com/x-1960-LA-City-Buzz-Examiner
Read more stories by Kay Ebeling, LA city buzz Examiner at http://www.examiner.com/x-1960-LA-City-Buzz-Examiner
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment