Our local Catholic Bishop told us that earlier on this week, he pulled up at the traffic lights and there were a couple in a van next to him. The woman was saying something to him, so he rolled down the window. She yelled “Child-abuser!” and drove off. The whole congregation were in shock and I can’t speak for everyone, but I got so angry I had to go out for fresh air. 

Priests are actually the least likely to abuse children out of all jobs, that’s why it’s always on the news when they do. But that makes people think that they’re the most likely and that all priests are child abusers. Even if nearly all priests were child abusers, that woman still had no right to see a man in a dog-collar, minding his own business, and yell abuse at him because of his religion and what she thinks it means.

I get made fun of in school, an Anglican Christian School, for being Catholic, but it’s usually by people who know its not true and say it jokingly and would never say it to anyone else and it still upsets me. Imagine how it must feel for an elderly man who has devoted his entire life to God and given up having a wife or children to do so, who has been working himself ill because of the lack of priests and is always scared for his life because of recent killings of priests in his area. Imagine how it must feel for a man who has devoted over 70 years of his life to helping people to now have to live in fear because of people who don’t know what they’re hurting people for. What has he ever done to deserve that?