Some three years after Jennifer Chapin first proposed that a memorial to victims of clergy abuse be included in Oakland's new Christ the Light Cathedral, a healing garden she helped plan was dedicated Saturday afternoon in the cathedral's shadow. Yet moments before the dedication ceremony began, Chapin had yet to set foot inside.
It didn't feel right, she said. Not yet.
The day had been "a long time coming," in the words of Terrie Light, a member with Chapin of the Healing Garden Committee and, like her, a victim of childhood sexual abuse by clergy.
Not just the years that passed as the idea wended its way through planning committees working on the $190 million cathedral. But the many years that had passed for many survivors since their abuse - abuse hidden from view for years before it came to light in a scandal that has rocked the Roman Catholic Church.
More than 4,300 priests were accused of sexually abusing minors between 1950 and 2002, according to a 2004 report by the United States Conference of Bishops. The scandal has reportedly cost the church more than $2 billion in payments to victims.
The new garden in Oakland is a subtle place, tucked away behind the soaring cathedral. Unless you look for it, you won't find it.
That location was carefully chosen, Chapin said, with the awareness that some victims still cannot bear to go inside a church or to face religious symbols - also missing from the spare garden area.
"I have a hard time still going into churches," Chapin said. "I go in for funerals and weddings, but some people won't even go in for that. ... This is outside, in case that feels safer."
The garden itself is composed of two simple curving hedge-lined benches around a fractured basalt sculpture. The quiet corner looks out over the lake, sheltered by the vast cathedral's curving wall.
The hedges are meant to represent holding hands and to mirror the Chinese yin-and-yang symbol of balance, said Tim Lynch, another committee member. The sculpture, from the Japanese artist Masatoshi Izumi, called to Light when she saw it in the San Francisco gallery Japonesque.
"It was broken in three places, but it had this pull to come together. Though it was broken, it wanted to be whole," she said. "That is our journey."
Some are not yet whole. Although several survivors of abuse attended Saturday's dedication, others stayed away from what they considered a somewhat empty gesture.
"It's a good idea for the survivors who want to go there and reflect," said Joey Piscitelli, Northern California director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. But as a victim of abuse in the Oakland diocese, Piscitelli said Bishop Allen Vigneron's involvement with the garden smacked of hypocrisy.
"For the majority of (victims) that I know personally, the garden doesn't mean anything to them, because he hasn't apologized to them and he hasn't done anything," he said. "The hell with the garden, what are you doing for us?"
Vigneron couldn't say Saturday if he had apologized directly to Piscitelli, but he noted that he had participated in 21 apology services and that the Oakland diocese has taken steps, such as creating a review board, before such steps were taken by the church as a whole.
Vigneron offered "heartfelt apologies to victim survivors" during his comments at Saturday's ceremony, saying church leaders had "failed" to expose "the evil of clergy sexual abuse" of children and young adults.
"This garden, like all such memorials, brings back painful memories, memories that, yes, we might be tempted to suppress," he said. "As it says on the plaques at the entrances, 'We remember, and we affirm, never again.' "
Chapin, speaking before the ceremony, said she recognized that for some victims, the garden is not enough. "There's always more that can be done. But this is the only memorial of its kind anywhere in the United States, in any cathedral," she said. "I think it's a great start. Not the end, but a great start."
At ceremony's end, Chapin took her 3-year-old daughter, Sasha, by the hand. Together they walked into the curving stone palms of the garden of memory.
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