In a city better know for a myth of broomsticks, we lived Italian, Catholic and protected
Saints, bleeding hearts and hallway popes watched over us, staring us into its of contrition.
Free movement was constricted out of a hellish concern for our last bloody beats.
1964. My brother, the altar boy.
Driven by the gaze of saints, he offered Fr. Joseph Birmingham his uncensored conventions.
Private counseling at the rectory was the suggested penance.
For 30 years my brother hid alone in the black. Shamed, confused, scared, angry.
“Why did I let it happen? Why didn’t I just leave the room?”
In 1994 he spoke about his abuse for the first time. He encountered the Archdiocese of Boston.
Over time his suspicions were aroused.
He posted this simple advertisement in the communities where Birmingham had served.
Within a couple of weeks there were dozens of responses and ample evidence.
For over 20 years Fr. Joseph Birmingham had cut a path through the Archdiocese of Boston,
abusing the bodies and corrupting the hearts and minds of over a hundred boys.
Priests, Bishops and Cardinals protected him, rewarding him
with access to new boys in each port.
Today a halo light illuminates. A startled clergy scatter in a cockroach crawl.
Their corporate motives & thirst for power revealed.
They hide behind inherited ceremony, dressed to threaten, moving to the stifling drone of out-of-tune organs.
They count their pennies in the dark and measure faith by the dollar.
Left behind are a flock of broken-hearted believers, their Christ kidnapped,
their monetary donations heisted.
The churches they financed and constructed are closed, then sold to the highest bidders.
Their gifts to loved ones - statues and relics - are auctioned off. The profits are used to disinfect the dung of
priestly perverts and to cover the shame of hierarchal acts of aiding and abetting.
We are left to wonder. On whose wrist twists the true Hand of God?
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