The first time I saw St. Peter’s Basilica, I felt nothing. It was not the reaction I had thought I would have. I was a lifelong Catholic who had once seriously considered becoming a nun, and who now reported on the Vatican for a Jesuit magazine. But just a few days before, on a silent retreat, I had been red-faced, tears burning down my cheeks, as I hurled all my anger at God for standing by, apparently unmoved, as tens of thousands of children were sexually abused by Catholic priests over decades.
It was winter 2019. The previous six months on the religion beat had been wall-to-wall sex abuse coverage, starting with the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report, which recounted in harrowing detail 70 years of abuse and cover-up. Then came the once-beloved Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s fall from grace, when his serial abuse of minors and seminarians was exposed by a few brave survivors and journalists. And finally, there was Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s attempted coup, in which he hijacked the church’s legitimate reckoning with abuse and the systems that enabled it, twisting it into an 11-page manifesto claiming that Pope Francis himself had covered for Mr. McCarrick.
Covering this news day in and day out, hearing and working to confirm, as much as possible, the harrowing details of how children were abused, along with discerning the intentions of people like Archbishop Viganò who wanted to use victims’ trauma to further their own agendas, was excruciating. Those of us journalists who were younger had a particularly hard time; we had mostly been shielded from the abuse crisis during the first wave of revelations in 2002, having been too young to understand. Now, we were having to confront the evil within the church as employees and representatives of the institution. We all believed that for the church to move forward in any credible way, it first had to confront the whole truth. That was the mantra of what was quickly nicknamed the “summer of shame”: The church needs to face the truth in order to heal.
That noble aspiration carried us only so far. I, for one, was compensating for the days of reading through the Grand Jury report and fact-checking Archbishop Viganò’s claims by drinking even more than I already did. In fact, I first read the Viganò letter in the bathroom of some bar in Brooklyn I could never locate again.
I realize now this was because the way I had usually processed difficult things had been ripped out from under me: Whereas I used to find comfort slipping into the adoration chapel in St. Patrick’s Cathedral near America’s office or relaxing into a pew in the church next door to my Bronx apartment to just talk through it all with God, now the place I had gone for consolation had become the focus of my anger.
I remember feeling comforted at Mass only one time during that summer—it was one Sunday when the first reading was, “Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the Lord.” Indeed, I thought. This is exactly what our church leaders have done, and they deserve divine punishment. Immediately afterward came the responsorial psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd.” While the shepherds of the church continued to anger and disappoint me, the true shepherd, God, was there. I clung desperately to that sliver of hope.
In Search of New Resolve
I wasn’t the only one struggling. The Washington Post op-ed section released a video of its many Catholic editors talking about how the abuse revelations had shaken their faith. Several friends stopped going to church; some have never come back. One told me even his devout parents could not bear to go to church anymore, so they decided as a family to stay home. Everywhere I turned, the feeling was the same—to quote Yeats, “things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”
Although the epicenter of the crisis was the United States, Archbishop Viganò’s letter, dropped during the pope’s trip to Ireland, ensured its shock waves were felt everywhere, and Rome felt the need to take action. Pope Francis announced that he was gathering the heads of bishops’ conferences from around the world to come to the Vatican in spring 2019 for a euphemistically named summit on “the protection of minors.” Vatican reporters called it what it was: the summit on sexual abuse.
Most reporters were skeptical: There was no talk before the summit of imposing new rules or consequences for bishops who failed to report abuse. Expectations were that nothing would change. Nevertheless, it was going to be a huge media event, and I, like hundreds of others, requested temporary accreditation from the Holy See to cover it.
It just so happened that my trip to Rome for the summit bridged two other scheduled trips: I would go from a silent retreat in Montreal directly to Rome for the summit, and then to Israel and Palestine to work on one of America’s guided Holy Land pilgrimages. My faith was wobbly at best and painful at worst, and I would be facing it head-on during the retreat, then marching directly into the center of the church’s failures, and afterward having to put on a nice, pious face for pilgrims making a once-in-a-lifetime visit to Christianity’s holiest sites.
I sensed I would emerge either an atheist or, miraculously, someone with new resolve. If God was going to intervene, I thought, now would be a good time.
The Vatican summit, as expected, produced few immediate results. Although the bishops had heard powerful testimonies by abuse survivors from every continent—and even one from a female journalist who vowed to be the bishops’ “worst enemy” if they did not take action—follow-up reforms would only begin gradually, months later. Trying not to lose hope, I vowed to track the next developments closely.
‘A Soul Bowed Down’
Directly after a few whirlwind days covering the Vatican’s summit, I boarded a flight to Tel Aviv, where I joined the pilgrimage through the Holy Land. I was exhausted, having had no time for reflection in Rome except a few stolen moments that morning when I had gone to St. Peter’s Basilica at dawn. My primary feeling in that enormous cathedral was ambivalence: I prayed for friends I had promised to pray for, but when it came time to sit with God, I did not hear much. Walking out, I had a humorously decisive thought for someone who had only just stepped foot in Rome and never been to Galilee: “I think I’m more of a Galilee Catholic than a Rome Catholic.”
When I reached Galilee, the natural surroundings were beautiful, but time to reflect remained elusive because of my work responsibilities. It was only at the very end of the pilgrimage, at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the site believed to be Jesus’ tomb, that I finally had a moment of quiet.
Exhausted emotionally, mentally and physically by the marathon trip, having spent the last few hours defending our group’s spot in line from other groups of impatient pilgrims, I finally collapsed kneeling at Christ’s tomb for my allotted three seconds. (Really, there is a guy with a stopwatch there.) Still, it was enough time to feel a swell of consolation and to hear God say unmistakably: “Here is your only hope.”
I knew exactly what this message meant. Just days before, on that retreat in Montreal where I’d grappled with my anger with God, I’d read two quotations from one of my favorite Catholic writers, Madeleine Delbrêl: “For the Gospel to reveal its mystery, no special setting, no advanced education, no particular technique is required. All it needs is a soul bowed down in adoration and a heart stripped of trust in all things human.” Here I was, physically bowed down, adoring at the Resurrection site, with no hope left in the human institution of the church. Even this holy site was a place filled with aggression, divided among factions in fragile peace.
The second Delbrêl quotation was, “Unless you take this little book of the Gospel in your hand with the determination of a person who is holding onto his very last hope, you will neither be able to figure it out nor receive its message.” Here was my last hope: Despite humanity literally killing God Incarnate, God rose again, deciding we were worth saving.
Minutes later, we attended Mass in a nearby chapel. My colleague Father James Martin celebrated. He read from St. John’s account of the Resurrection—the one where Jesus first appears to Mary Magdalene.
Listening, I thought about Mary Magdalene’s unjust reputation as a sex worker, a characterization started centuries after her lifetime. Her name might actually mean “tower,” a tribute to her strength. In all the places we had visited, all the places where I had felt so spiritually dry, she had stayed by Jesus’ side. Even when male disciples had fled, Mary Magdalene never left; like so many victims of unjust treatment at the hands of church leaders, she also never got her due.
Father Martin, reading the Gospel, choked up when Mary Magdalene, mistaking Jesus for the gardener, demanded to know what had happened to his body. I imagined being her: bereaved, incensed, missing my dearest friend. And how Jesus, after going through hell and back, wanted to see her first.
“Mariam!” Father Martin’s voice cracked. Tears filled my eyes. “Rabbouni!” he whispered her reply.
I couldn’t stop crying—even now, that two-word exchange moves me deeply. Here was my only hope, the exchange that makes this broken world, this broken church, worth living in.
Against all odds, I didn’t return from my travels as an atheist, but with a new resolve to keep pushing forward—with my reporting, my wrestling with the institution of the church and my belonging in it, grounded in prayer, assured that that was where God wanted me. I’d collapsed at God’s tomb, bereft of hope in human institutions, and when I rose, I heard the Gospel anew: A woman whom Jesus so deeply loved was entrusted with the very message he became incarnate to deliver—that despite everything, death was defeated, sin and evil did not win out.
