Why I stood outside Archbishop Weakland’s funeral
Dear friends,
As a child, I dreamed of being a priest. I grew up in a devout Catholic family. My father died when I was an infant, leaving my mother to raise eight kids on her own. We attended mass every day. And when I was old enough, I was enrolled at St. Lawrence Seminary High School, a boarding school in Mt. Calvary, Wisconsin. I was thirteen years old.
Almost immediately, Father Gail Leifeld, a Capuchin monk and the rector of St. Lawrence, began grooming me for abuse. And then he raped me. The abuse continued throughout high school.
Me at 13 years old, the age at which my abuse started
I kept it a secret for almost 20 years. So did former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland. He knew Leifeld had been accused of abuse by several students, and he did not intervene. It was a column by Archbishop Rembert Weakland referring to concern surrounding sexual abuse in the Catholic Church as a “preoccupation” that prompted me to go public with my story. That was thirty years ago.
For decades, I fought alongside some of the same individuals who stood next to me Tuesday at a survivors’ memorial outside of former Archbishop Rembert Weakland’s public funeral. The chief architect of the Milwaukee archdiocese’s strategy to cover-up abuse and prevent justice for survivors, Weakland admitted to shredding evidence of child sex abuse, knowingly transferring abusive priests to new parishes, and using over $450,000 of Church money to pay off his own abuse claim made by a Marquette student alleging “date rape.”
He never apologized directly to me or any of the other thousands of victims who were abused under his watch. Many of those victims, including several of my friends, died by suicide. On Tuesday, we remembered their lives and their legacy outside of the Cathedral. Surrounded by childhood photos of victims and objects like rosaries, prayers books, and candles, symbols of the faith they had as young people, we gathered to honor them and carry on their wishes - that this would never happen to another child.
Our survivors’ memorial outside of the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist
This is why I started Nate’s Mission - named for a fellow survivor of clergy abuse who took his life. Nate so desperately wanted to stop the cycle of abuse and cover-up in his church and school in De Pere, Wisconsin. The only survivor-led organization in Wisconsin fighting for justice for survivors and transparency and accountability from the Catholic Church, Nate’s Mission is paving the way for a transition to an abuse-free Church. And we need your help.
I am asking you to consider donating to keep our work going. Gifts like yours help to ensure Nate’s Mission can continue to stand up for Wisconsin survivors by telling the truth and demanding, once and for all, the end of clergy abuse.
Sincerely,
Peter Isely