For as long as she can remember, Verona Mazzei wanted to minister to people, but as a member of the Roman Catholic Church, she was content to assist in other ways.Like most other French girls living in Nonantum in the 1950s, Mazzei was part of a close-knit community with bonds cemented at St. Jean l'Evangeliste Church.
When she grew up, Mazzei took on the role of religious education director, working with what she considered her extended family, and she loved it.
The associate pastor of St. Jean's, the Rev. Paul Shanley, was a progressive priest who even let her preach, something the Catholic church did not permit women to do, she said.
The good accomplished at St. Jean's came into question one day in 2002, when she got a cryptic call from her daughter-in-law, insisting on a family meeting, said Mazzei, 66, who now lives in Natick.
Soon after, an attorney, wanting to brace her for the imminent media storm, warned her Shanley had molested someone in the St. Jean's community. It never occurred to her that it was a member of her family.
Mazzei's son-in-law, who was in the military, started remembering Shanley sexually abusing him as a child, she said.
Ultimately, four men claimed they had been molested by Shanley while at St. Jean's. Three of them - all except her brother-in-law - were dropped from the Middlesex Superior Court criminal case in which Shanley was convicted.
``I felt guilty, because these were my friends' kids. I was a mother, I was supposed to protect them,'' Mazzei said.
``I felt I let my friends down, I let my community down,'' she said. ``These people were my family. As a mother, you always blame yourself: Where was I? How come I didn't see it?''
Shanley, 79, is serving 12 to 15 years in Old Colony Correctional Center, following his 2005 conviction in Middlesex Superior Court on two counts of rape of a child and two counts of indecent assault and battery upon a child for the rape and assault of a Sunday school student at St. Jean's in the 1980s.
Aside from the psychological trauma it caused, the scandal left Mazzei and other faithful searching for a new church after St. Jean's was closed.
Mazzei thought she found her home at Our Lady Help of Christians parish on Washington Street in Newton, but a sudden gut feeling compelled her to leave, she said.
``I was sitting there at a pew, meditating, and I got a rush of `Get out of here,' of fear. I listened to my gut and ran out of the church,'' she said.
There was nothing wrong with Our Lady's, she said, but she realized she no longer had faith in the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy.
So she started searching for a new house of God. Nothing felt right outside the Roman Catholic Church, she said.
Mazzei finally found what she was looking for with a small group of church members from Our Lady's who advocated for ``priests of integrity'' - priests who spoke out against pedophilia and pushed for accountability of abusers.
They formed a community and researched the Old Catholic Church, ultimately joining the Ecumenical Catholic Communion.
The tradition follows the Roman Catholic faith, she said, but ``without all the organizational trappings.''
There, Mazzei not only found her new church, but her calling: an ordained priest.
It was a calling she could never fulfill at St. Jean's or Our Lady's.
``As a woman in the Roman Catholic Church, it's: You can wash my vestments, you can put out my vestments, but you can never wear my vestments,'' Mazzei said.
``In all fairness to Paul Shanley, he helped me to recognize my own ministry. He allowed me to see what was always there,'' Mazzei said.
On May 23, she and Rosa Buffone, another former Our Lady's parishioner, were ordained as priests at the Unitarian Universalist Church, where the Old Catholic Church rents a chapel.
On Sunday, Mazzei celebrated her first Mass. All over her white robe, she sewed brightly colored handprints from her grandchildren.
``They represent my commitment to protect children,'' Mazzei said.
``Out of all of this (tragedy from abuse), I want people to know, through all this pain, out of the ashes of the church, there is a light. Out of the ashes, something good is coming, there is an alternative, a church that is open to all,'' said Mazzei.
SIC: DNT