Wherever I go, in my “day job” I take with me Survivors Voice flyers. They just are very simple, telling people how to get to the website to get help if they have been abused by priests.
I travel all over the country, I teach from one end of it to the other, and I pass a LOT of catholic churches! I always put flyers in those churches,(although I have to hold my nose and my breath as I go in!).I pin them on their notice boards, put them in their leaflet displays, I even put them on pews or alter lecterns (if no one is about!)
When we were last in Rome, and found ourselves (accidentally – I hasten to add !) in a vatican owned hotel!!!!!!(imagine) I removed the “holy” pictures from their frames in my bedroom and replaced them with Survivors Voice posters. I even posted them through the vatican letter boxes.
It gives ME a great deal of satisfaction.
But they take them down!! almost immediately (I have checked this out) they remove them pretty bloody quickly. Why the hell they would do that has to be the question, all the flyers do is suggest a way for people to get help, the church sure as hell is NOT doing that!
Any organisation with an ounce of decency would welcome help for their many many many victims! But of course they don’t have that integrity! Nor am I ever surprised, but still I do it as part of my own two fingers back at them!
But now I have a new pastime!
As many of you know, whenever we do talks or attend rallies etc, we often give you packets of “forget me not” seeds to plant on our behalf. We ask you to take a few moments, find somewhere beautiful and sprinkle those seeds. Put them in your garden, in your window boxes, in the fields, and think of us. The more flowers that grow, the more people that know! The more chance for change.
It gives me a wonderful warm feeling knowing these beautiful little flowers are planted all over the world, Italy, Ireland, America, Poland, Australia etc. with us in mind.
What I am now doing, each time I travel, along with my leaflets, I am sprinkling the seeds all over any church ground I can see! They can’t take them off the notice boards, they can’t easily see where they come from – but it gives ME a great deal of satisfaction knowing that Survivors Voice Europe has used some of their shit to grow something beautiful!
What I would love to do now is ask those of you who have planted our little flowers to send us pictures of them where they grow !
We would love to see them so PLEASE help us spread even more beauty against all that religious ugliness!
