190/365 So when do the peasants start revolting, anyway?

"I only saw him cry twice," my aunt says over lunch, speaking of the priest who married me and Mike, who had been intertwined in my extended family's life for decades. "Once when he was caring for the priest living with him who was dying of AIDS, and it just got too much to handle, it was still when nobody was talking about it and the man had made him swear not to tell anyone. And he said to me, 'I just have to tell someone,' and I thought, who am I going to tell, anyway?"

"And then the second time was about this priest, who was later assigned to be pastor at that church. He said that he knew a friend was abusing children. He was struggling with what to do about it."

I wait for her to continue. I know, from an outsider's perspective, what had gone on at that neighboring church when the proverbial shit hit the fan.

"He had gone to the diocese," she says with an exhale. "And he felt like he'd betrayed a confidence but he had to. His face just looked gray."

"But that must have been years ago," I think out loud.

She nods. "And then that priest was assigned to the parish in question, where it finally all went down."

It made me wonder. Had he really gone to the diocese, or was my aunt sugar coating the report? She was known to do that sort of thing. Had he just told her that? I couldn't see that being true. He took things pretty seriously over all. Or could it be yet another case of bishop malfeasance. Hmm. Let's think a moment.