Please see the post entitled "Secrets and Sorrow" from August 16th that features the article "Children of Catholic priests live with secrets and sorrow" By Michael Rezendes for Part 1 of this extraordinary story.
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An excerpt from the Boston Globe -
A priest’s son takes his case directly to the Pope
By Michael Rezendes
ONE BRIGHT MORNING three years ago, Vincent Doyle joined the thousands of Catholic faithful jamming St. Peter’s Square for a chance to see Pope Francis make his weekly public appearance and bestow his blessing on the crowd.
Unlike most of those standing in the searing Roman sun, Doyle was headed to a front-row seat in a reserved section very close to where the pope would emerge, and he was already silently rehearsing an urgent message in the pontiff’s native language.
“I am the son of a Catholic priest in Ireland,” he repeated in Spanish, praying he would not become tongue-tied or overcome with emotion when he met the Holy Father.
Doyle learned at the age of 28 that the beloved godfather he grew up calling “J.J.” — a Catholic priest from a rural diocese in central Ireland — was, in fact, his biological father.
J.J. had died years before, leaving Doyle with many unanswered questions. But, after discovering his true father and meeting a woman whose father was also a Catholic priest, one question in particular would drive him: Just how many children of Catholic clergy are there?
Though there had been notorious scandals in the 1990s involving Irish clergy who fathered children, there was little reliable information on the larger subject of priests and their offspring, Doyle found. So he came up with his own solution: He built a website he called Coping International and invited anyone who was the daughter or son of a priest to contact him.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/08/17/father-father-priest-son-takes-his-case-directly-pope/g8ObYa0NATZy3itVSzdflM/story.html
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