Victim to Pope: “Go next week to town where predator is”

“Oust him & explain your recklessness to parents,” he says

Admitted child molester sexually assaulted boy in Boston Archdiocese

He admitted the crime yet he’s just been found working in an Italian city

Group wants pedophile priests permanently listed on data bases in Boston and in Rome

Both Pope and Cardinal O’Malley should stop talking & “fish or cut bait,” SNAP argues

WHAT
Alarmed because the priest who molested him now works in a parish, a clergy sex abuse victim will speak publicly for the first time at a sidewalk news conference and urge the Pope to
-- go next weekend to the town where the child molesting cleric is now assigned,
-- oust him & other clerics who molested kids in one nation but have been quietly moved to other nations,
-- explain why church officials have so clearly and needlessly endangered children, and
-- set up a permanent, on-line list of predator priests across the globe, to protect kids in the future.

Other clergy abuse victims will
--blast Boston’s Catholic Cardinal for “pondering” such a data base for more than a year without taking action &
-- urge anyone who saw, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes to come forward, get help, call police, expose predators, safeguard kids and start healing.

WHEN
TODAY, Friday, April 16, 2:00 p.m.

WHERE
Outside the Boston Archdiocese Catholic Cathedral, ADDRESS (corner of State) in Boston MA

WHO
Five-eight members of a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests including a

Vermont man who is speaking publicly for the first time about his predator (who was discovered this week by the Associated Press working at a parish in Italy, despite admitting, in writing, that he molested a child)

VISUAL
The group will hold signs and childhood photos and a letter being sent to the Pope

WHY
On Wednesday, a shocking new Associated Press investigation found that 30 child molesting Catholic clerics are now working in new countries for the church, often near kids, despite having been convicted or faced credible child sex allegations in a previous country. (Often, the predators were quietly shipped from more wealthy nations to the Third World, where kids are even more vulnerable.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2010/04/14/AR2010041404100.html

One of the clerics is Fr. Mario Pezzotti, who sexually assaulting a boy at a now-closed Holliston, Mass., boarding school run by his Xaverian religious order. Allegations against him surfaced in early 1993, but Pezzotti had already been sent to a remote area of Brazil's Amazon to work as a missionary. In a 1993 letter, he essentially admitted molesting a child. But in 2009, Catholic officials moved Pezzotti again, this time to Italy where he works now.

Pezzotti’s victim, Joe Callendar of Windsor Vermont, will speak publicly for the first time. Callendar is also writing to the Pope, urging him to go to the town where Pezzotti is, explain to parents why their kids were needlessly pout in harm’s way, and urge anyone who may have been hurt by him to step forward, call police and get help.

He and other victims will urge Catholic officials to 1) publicly identify predators like Pezzotti as “credibly accused,” 2) set up a public, international, on-line registry of predator priests across the globe, and 3) house predator priests in professionally-run facilities so that the offenders can get treatment and kids can be safer.

SNAP wants Massachusetts’ bishops, especially Cardinal Sean O’Malley, to push the Pope for these reforms. The group will harshly criticize O’Malley for talking about an on-line predator priest data base for more than a year without taking any action.

With the registry, parents, neighbors and employers could quickly and easily learn who and where the predators are and thus keep children away from them. About US 20 bishops have done this. Boston church officials have not.

In a 1993 handwritten note of apology from Pezzotti to one of his victims, the priest admitted passing "through a rather difficult moment" in the 1960s, and said he "asked to leave Holliston (MA) and to go to Brazil to change my life." SNAP, however, is skeptical of this alleged ‘transformation.’

This weekend, the Pope visits the European island of Malta.

CONTACT
Bill Nash, SNAP spokesperson, cell, 413-219-4312 etipottery@verizon.net
David Clohessy, Executive Director 314 566- 9790 SNAPclohessy@aol.com
Robert Costello 781 414 1178