In the annals of people who returned to their childhood faith after a time of alienation, few have had a longer sojourn than James O’Bryan. <\/p>\n
The Louisville native has reconciled with the Roman Catholic Church after being away from it for more than 80 years. <\/p>\n
In the end, O’Bryan reconciled with the church because of the actions of a priest — the same reason he said he left in the first place. <\/p>\n
O’Bryan, now 89 and living in northern California, was one of three plaintiffs who sued the Vatican in 2004, alleging that the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church had orchestrated a cover-up of sexual abuse through centuries of secret policies. He said he was sexually abused by a Louisville priest in 1928. <\/p>\n
That lawsuit effectively ended on Monday when the plaintiffs asked the court to dismiss their case. They conceded they faced insurmountable legal obstacles, including the Vatican’s status as a sovereign nation, which made it immune to most lawsuits, and the limited evidence on how bishops handled abuse cases decades ago. <\/p>\n
But even as that lawsuit proceeded, O’Bryan was finding his way back to church. <\/p>\n
In January, his wife of 52 years, Grace, was dying, he said. She was an Irish-American from Boston’s deeply Catholic culture, but had herself been long estranged from the church. However, she asked for last rites. the Rev. Louis Nichols, a local priest, came and performed them, then did the funeral Mass. <\/p>\n
“I saw how compassionate he was and how caring he was,” O’Bryan said. So O’Bryan called Nichols for a follow-up appointment, and “I’ve been going to church ever since.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Check out more at the Louisville link. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A remarkable odyssey has finally come to a close. From the Louisville Courier-Journal: In the annals of people who returned to their childhood faith after a time of alienation, few have had a longer sojourn than James O’Bryan. The Louisville native has reconciled with the Roman Catholic Church after being away from it for more…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-converts","category-people-in-the-pews"],"yoast_head":"\n
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