Letter to Pope Francis

Below you will find the text of a letter that I wrote to Pope Francis.
I have never written to a Pope before! 
I encourage you to write to our local Bishop - John Boissonneau
and our Archbishop - Cardinal Thomas Collins about this issue.


Pope Francis
Vatican City, Vatican

September 1, 2018

Your Holiness,

The words of St. Paul ring so true in these days: “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it” (1 Cor 12:26).  As the Pastor of a Parish in the suburbs of the Archdiocese of Toronto, I can share that we too have been suffering in these days. With you and with all of those who have suffered abuse at the hands of the Church and her clergy. I have been disgusted by the immorality that has been revealed to be evident in the highest circles of the hierarchy, and the completely unacceptable systematic cover-up of the crimes of priests by Bishops, the shepherds charged with caring for the flock. 
The Bishops were protecting the clergy and the Institutional Church, instead of the vulnerable children. The irony is that if we had protected the vulnerable “little ones”, then our Holy Mother, the Church, would have been protected! 
I am challenged, and I am challenging my parishioners to allow this indignation, this righteous anger, to bring about a new righteousness in the Church. I choose to stay in the Church to fight for truth, to fight for those “little ones” who had no one to fight for them decades ago.
     Holy Father, I abhor the recent attacks upon your integrity, yet your silence in these days, while similar to that of Christ, will not give our Church the confidence it needs. And while the former Nuncio to the United States of America has “dialed back” on the substance of his accusations at each daily opportunity he has had, transparency necessitates timely disclosure. Yet even more important than talk, which there has been a lot of, is the need for action.
     I feel that this is an opportune time to look at a renewed structure of accountability in the church – so that there are clear mechanisms for appropriate oversight of all clergy by the Laity in these matters of morality and the protection of the vulnerable. The time for action is ripe. We may be at the precipice of a great divide: will the Church’s actions follow Her words? Or will She be relegated to being made irrelevant in society by inaction?
       Our parish prays for you always – and I for your strength to fight this scourge on our Church and society, which has been a part of my formation since I entered the Seminary in 1988.

Yours in Christ,

Rev. Laurence J. Léger, 
Pastor, Holy Family Parish, Bolton