The truth about the 'celibate' priests who father children - and then abandon them
LONDON (ENGLAND)
Telegraph
November 3, 2017
By Hugh Costello
At the age of 12, Sarah Thomas found out that the father she had never known was a Roman Catholic priest.
"I’d been told he was a lecturer, but being quite inquisitive I’d always suspected there was information I hadn’t been given," she says. "My mother had been too fearful to tell me the truth."
Her situation may sound unusual, but there is a global community of people who have been confronted with the fact that their 'missing' fathers were in fact priests who had taken a vow to remain celibate, while secretly fathering children they would never acknowledge. I travelled from Buckingham, where 39-year-old Sarah lives, to Uganda while making my BBC World Service documentary My Father the Priest, trying to understand why these men would break the vows they took - and the devastation their behaviour wrought.
When Sarah's mother found out she was pregnant two years into the relationship, her then-boyfriend "was very upset and broke it off that day. He never spoke to her again on his own. There was always a senior priest who acted as his adviser."
Telegraph
November 3, 2017
By Hugh Costello
At the age of 12, Sarah Thomas found out that the father she had never known was a Roman Catholic priest.
"I’d been told he was a lecturer, but being quite inquisitive I’d always suspected there was information I hadn’t been given," she says. "My mother had been too fearful to tell me the truth."
Her situation may sound unusual, but there is a global community of people who have been confronted with the fact that their 'missing' fathers were in fact priests who had taken a vow to remain celibate, while secretly fathering children they would never acknowledge. I travelled from Buckingham, where 39-year-old Sarah lives, to Uganda while making my BBC World Service documentary My Father the Priest, trying to understand why these men would break the vows they took - and the devastation their behaviour wrought.
When Sarah's mother found out she was pregnant two years into the relationship, her then-boyfriend "was very upset and broke it off that day. He never spoke to her again on his own. There was always a senior priest who acted as his adviser."
No comments:
Post a Comment