Doing the right thing
Barbara and David Thorp are a couple of my favorite Catholics. He’s a long-time evangelist who has served the Church across the country through the Charismatic Renewal movement; she’s a licensed social worker who built the Boston archdiocese’s Pregnancy Help service from the ground up. This year she accepted perhaps the toughest job a layman has in the archdiocese: bringing the Church’s help to victims of abuse by clergy.
After hearing the stories of 150 alleged victims of clergy sex abuse, Barbara Thorp said the hardest part of her job is simply listening.
“I can’t tell you the number of men I’ve sat across from, weeping, and how disturbing it is to have a 40- or 50-year-old man shedding the tears of a 12-year-old boy. It’s heartbreaking,” said Thorp, head of the Office of Healing and Assistance for the Archdiocese of Boston.