Phil Saviano Tells Survivors to Speak Out

I was on leave from training as a Postulant [step before novice] in Missionary of Charity of Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s nun’s order in Rome to put my mother who had got paralysed into a home and return to Rome continue my vocation. Father Forsythe in South Belfast Catholic church I attended while looking after my mother, asked me to pray for a girl whose period had not come and who was from what he called a ‘good family’ to pray for her not to be pregnant. Some days after he told me her period had come and thanked me. he asked me to his house. I thought he would have a housekeeper. When I got there he was alone. He had a calendar on the wall with girls in swimsuits and was playing pop music on a music centre. He said pop music was a love-song to God. He said ,‘Pamela, I need sex’. I was horrified, as I had been in the convent for a year and a half and wasn’t used to worldly people like Father Forsythe. I quickly went out to the off-licence round the corner from his house and bought a can of beer. I came back and gave it to him and said ‘Drink this instead’. He said ‘thanks Pamela’. Then I went out. As I was leaving I met a woman coming in. I said to her, ‘I wouldn’t go in there if I were you. He wants sex.’ She said that’s OK. Then she told me that he and possibly other priests had notebooks with the names of women they could call on. I found it difficult to take this all in and left. I did not report Father Forsythe as he had asked me and had accepted my refusal. I compared this with the experiences of other family members who I heard had just been manhandled without the priest or monk asking first. On the other hand I wondered how I could go to this priest for confession. ‘Forgive me father, for I have sinned’. it made no sense. So I left the Church and attended Evangelical churches. I didn’t return to the convent.

We can do together what we cannot do alone. We have the power to protect kids and affect legislative change to expose those who failed to protect the vulnerable among us. Thank you, Phil; thank you, SNAP!

Phil Saviano Speaks Out http://www.snapnetwork.org/phil_saviano_speaks_out?recruiter_id=38926

HC Communication
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Published on 26 May 2014

While on a course in Northern Ireland, Hanover College student Savanna Wofford talks to Father John Forsythe about community divisions in Belfast and hopes for reconciliation through youth programs like the Ulster Project.

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Pamela Hirsch
Pamela Hirsch3 weeks ago
That’s the priest who asked me for sex