St. Anthony of Padua Named the Rapist. It Did Not Name the Raped.

The bulletin was dated for the week ending June 7. On page two, under the heading “Intentions of the Holy Mass,” the name Anthony Odiong appeared in black ink on glossy paper. The list was neat as a grocery list.

The women he assaulted did not appear. Their names were not on the list. Their injuries were not held up for prayer. The page asked the community to pray for him, and to pray for the sick, and to pray for the recently dead, and to pray for the souls in purgatory. It did not ask the community to pray for the women whose bodies he had used.

The women read the bulletin. They read his name in the list of intentions and felt the old nausea rise in the throat that had not asked for a name to be printed there.

On May 29 a criminal court jury in Waco, Texas, convicted Anthony Odiong of first- and second-degree sexual assault. On June 2 those jurors sentenced him to life in prison. The state proved that Odiong had exploited his spiritual authority as a clergyman to pursue a years-long sexual relationship with a congregant identified in court as Mary Doe. It proved he had compelled another woman, Jane Doe, to submit to intercourse with a man to which she did not consent. The charges were corroborated by other devout Catholic women who described similar encounters with Odiong after meeting him in his role as a priest, including at St. Anthony of Padua in Luling, Louisiana, where he served as pastor from 2015 until late 2023.

An initial parochial bulletin for the week carried Odiong’s name among the prayer intentions. A spokesperson for the Archdiocese of New Orleans stated that a parishioner had requested the inclusion, citing a call to pray for those who have turned away from God to return to His mercy. When asked about the intention for Odiong, Mary Doe and Jane Doe observed that there was no corresponding prayer for the healing of his victims. Mary Doe acknowledged that praying for Odiong’s soul was a right act, but said doing the same for his victims was equally necessary. Jane Doe said the intention demonstrated that many people “have yet to reckon with the fact” that Odiong had “used the love and trust of communities” to commit his crimes.

After the Guardian queried the archdiocese, and after Mary and Jane Doe observed the omission, St. Anthony removed the first version from its website. The church published a replacement. In the slot where Odiong’s name had been, the words “Special Intention & Victims of Clergy Abuse” now appeared. Archbishop James Checchio later instructed the incumbent pastor to include all who were hurt by Odiong’s actions in the church’s prayers.

Anthony, you wore the collar. You stood at the altar and you turned the bread and the wine and you asked God to look away from what you were doing in the dark. You took Mary’s trust and you ground it down to the bone. You took Jane and you held her down while another man used her and you told her this was what God asked of her. You used the word of God as the lever to pry open the door to her body.

James, you hold the press release. You hold the bulletin. When you wrote Anthony’s name in the intention, the ink went black on the glossy paper. You did not write the names of the women. The omission sits in the throat like a splinter that will not come up. You swallow the bulletin and the splinter catches. The taste of the omission is the taste of copper in the back of the mouth. It does not wash out when the archdiocese types the correction.

You typed the list on a keyboard. You hit print. You folded the pages. You stacked them in the narthex. You placed his name in the list of those the church would hold before God, and you did not place theirs. You said you were calling him back to mercy. You did not mention the mercy they needed when he was in the confessional with the door closed. You did not mention the mercy they needed when the verdict came down and they wept in the hallway. You did not mention the mercy they needed when the sentence was handed down and the cameras turned toward them and their faces held the cost of the years.

The parishioner who requested the name said the request came from mercy. The parishioner’s hands had not been washed. The parishioner did not feel the residue on the fingers. The parishioner typed the name and the fingers did not register the blood. The parishioner folded the bulletins and the blood transferred to the paper. The parishioner did not see the blood. The ink was black. The blood was red. The red was invisible to the hands that had not been asked to see it.

The woman who read the bulletin at her kitchen table felt the old nausea settle into the space behind her sternum. The name had been on her body. The name had been in her mouth during the years she could not say it. The name had been in the courtroom, spoken by the prosecutor, spoken by the judge. And now the name was in the bulletin, on paper the parish would keep for the record, as if the parish had not known what the name had done. The throat of the woman closed when she swallowed. The metallic taste under her tongue had not been there before the verdict and then it arrived and then it stayed. The bulletin did not name the metallic taste. The bulletin did not name the throat that would not open. The bulletin named the man whose body had been the source of the taste and the throat and the name.

The correction comes because the women spoke. The correction slides the line “Victims of Clergy Abuse” into the margin like a stone rolled back over a grave. You want the bulletin to be clean. You want the list of intentions to be a list that makes your conscience sleep through the night. It will not sleep. The women are awake. The women are still learning how to walk into a church and not feel the wall of the room closing around their lungs. It is the same cheap prayer the institution offers when the ledger of its own violence is opened, the same reflex that surfaced when seventy-five priests were laid bare in Rhode Island and the diocese reached for a press release instead of penance. The parish performed the prayer for the rapist because the prayer for the rapist is cheap. It costs nothing to print his name. It costs everything to print their names and admit that the man who stood at this altar was a wolf and the flock was his food and the shepherd let him in.

This week the church will pray for the victims. Last week it prayed for the man who made them victims. The week before that, before the verdict, it had not prayed for them at all. The week after next, when the news cycle has moved on, when the archdiocese’s statement has been archived, when the copy machine has printed the next bulletin, the slot will hold a different name. The church’s memory is the length of a news cycle. The women’s memory is the length of their lives.

The church will call this reconciliation. The church will call this pastoral care. The church will call this the process of healing. The women will call this what it is: the institution that housed the predator, protected the predator, transferred the predator, prayed for the predator, and when the camera lights came on, remembered that the women existed, and issued a statement, and changed the bulletin, and waited for the cameras to leave.

Jesus saw this in the temple. He saw the money changers and he saw the priests who counted the coin while the poor were ground underfoot. He saw the whited sepulchres. “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess… Ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” (Matthew 23:25–27). The bulletin is the whitewash. The ink is the lime on the stone. Underneath are the names of the women who are still learning how to breathe without the hand of the priest on their neck. The cup gleams on the outside. What is inside the cup has not been poured out. The women are still swallowing the taste that the bulletin refused to name.

The church asks for prayers for the survivors now, because the survivors demanded it. The survivor does not wait for the bulletin. The survivor breaks the stone.