Fairbanks Bishop Listening To The Victims Of Jesuit Priest Abuse

Bishop Donald Kettler

Bishop Donald Kettler, head of the Roman Catholic Diocese in Fairbanks, sat in a tiny meeting room in the Yup’ik village of St. Michael.  

“I’ve come this evening just to, to hear what you’d like to tell me, or what you’d like to say to me,” said Kettler, who oversees a northern and western Alaska diocese more than three times the size of Italy. A grey V-neck sweater framed his priest’s collar and soft features.  

“If there’s something that you’d like to tell me, please, uh, you know. Do that.” About 10 villagers stared back at the Bishop in silence. A man and woman sat holding hands next to a window. Someone had closed the blinds. Finally, a middle-aged man named Ben Andrews spoke. 

“Joseph Lundowski. Father Endal …” he began, naming the men who sexually abused him and a generation of other St. Michael children on an almost daily basis. “I wish that those who victimized me, I wish they was here, too,” said Andrews, 

who says his father once beat him for saying he’d been raped by a priest. Andrews clasped his hands together on the wooden table, then put his palms to his head as Kettler apologized on behalf of the church.

Link (here) to the great blog post at Laitytude