The Penitent Church

"I had confidence in the church, I had confidence in St. Joseph's Oratory."
"Perhaps I am naive, but I never would have believed that it would go this far."
"This is why I decided to speak out about it."
"I shared my suffering and my anger toward that priest who had ruined the life of a young person of 18 years old."
"He said, Don't talk about this here. It can't be. We don't talk about this here."
"I find this difficult because as priests we give our lives to the church. And it's sad how we can be betrayed by this church."
"I told myself that if I don't talk, who will? No one can really talk because they are too vulnerable."
Reverend Andre Samson

A man of no mean accomplishments, dedicated to his faith, Reverend Samson is a veteran of 30 years as a priest. He is also a full-time tenured university professor. He served as a military chaplain during the Persian Gulf War. He teaches counselling at the University of Ottawa. Over his years as a priest giving comfort to believers he has come across many young people experiencing crisis.

He had, he said, never before come across a young man in such "intense psychological distress."

Reverend Samson was working at the St. Joseph's Oratory in Montreal. In June a distraught young man whom he had never before seen, approached him and confided in him that he was being sexually assaulted. By a priest from another parish. When he sought to comfort the young man and asked him to identify who the predator was, the young man refused to identify him. Nor would he say what church he attended.

Seeing his extreme suffering, Reverend Samson advised the young man that he needed professional counselling. The young man's condition so moved Reverend Samson that he wanted to inform others about the episode he had experienced. Two years earlier the Congregation of the Holy Cross, responsible for operating the oratory, had agreed to an apology and to pay up to $18-million to compensate victims who suffered sexual abuse over a time span of five decades.

It hardly occurred to Reverend Samson that by revealing to his fellow priests during lunchtime what he had just experienced, would lead to his being reprimanded. While a priest hearing confession knows that what he hears must remain confidential, Reverend Samson did not know who the young man, could not identify him by name, nor his tormentor, nor the church involved. But he did want to convey to his colleagues what he had learned, to share with them his intense feelings of misery over the situation.

While he was speaking with his colleagues in the lunchroom of the refectory he was summarily cut off after a mere several minutes of recounting his story. The community superior, Claudel Petit-Homme, barred him from eating lunch in the dining hall, as a result of his earlier revelation. And then, he was fired, ostensibly for minor infractions such as failing to close his collar entirely and  demurring at placing the Host wafer on the tongues of worshippers during flu season (resulting from his heart condition).

St. Joseph's Oratory resides on the slope of Mount Royal, and attracts two million pilgrims and visitors from around the world, annually.