Syracuse Catholic Bishop Douglas Lucia spoke at a prayer service Friday evening dedicated to survivors of sexual abuse within the Catholic church.
Around 70 people gathered at LeMoyne College’s Panasci Chapel for an hour-long service that was organized by Hope, Healing and Solidarity, a Central New York-based organization dedicated to educating people about sexual abuse within the Catholic church and how to prevent it.
People prayed and listened to a testimony from sexual abuse survivor Jim Boone, who survived abuse by a priest when he was a teen nearly 60 years ago.
People also participated in a “Healing Ritual,” a symbolic candle-lighting ceremony meant to represent the light of Jesus guiding people to face their trauma and heal from it.
In February, a federal judge approved a plan that allowed the Catholic Diocese of Syracuse to emerge from bankruptcy. That plan includes a $176 million fund for more than 400 people who were sexually abused by clergy and other church staff.
In his remarks on Friday evening, Lucia emphasized his willingness to work with survivors of sexual abuse and join them in their healing journeys.
“As I come with this group, it’s not that I feel I come as bishop,” he said, “more that I come as one of you.”
Lucia acknowledged the difficulty that sex abuse survivors go through in trying to recognize the depth of the trauma they endured.
“Sometimes when we face the past, there is part of us that wants to blame ourselves more than anything,” he said. “You want to pretend it didn’t happen. And yet, it did.”
He said members of the church have often struggled with expressing any sort of criticism of priests - especially in calling out sexual abuse - because people are afraid of the repercussions that could come with such criticism.
But that is a norm within the church that he said he wants to leave in the past.
“This can’t happen again,” he said. “This just cannot happen again, and it happens too often.”
He emphasized the importance of every member of the church acknowledging its scourged history of sexual abuse and doing what they can to end that pattern, specifically by going through the child protection training.
“Every person who ministers in the Catholic church -lay, clergy, whatever - must go through the child protection training,” he said.
The bishop said some church members push back on the training because they feel they are being punished for something that they say “only the priests” did.
But Lucia said he rejects that notion, arguing that there must be a team effort within the Catholic church in restoring people’s trust.
“If there’s going to be peace in our world, if there’s going to be change, when abuse starts leaving our world, it begins with us,” he said. “It begins with you and me, and it begins with the church.”
The sentiment garnered calls of “Amen” from those in attendance.
“The only way we’re going to ever deal with this is if we stop treating it like it’s a ghost,” he said. “And deal with it really.”