Oh Lord, God, we pray today for the gift of Your abundant grace so that we may create a future pleasing to You, where your Church may be wise, bold, and confident in offering sanctuary to all those who have suffered abuse, trauma, trafficking, or neglect.

Guide us, Lord, by your grace to remain as brothers unified in our protection of children, young people, and all vulnerable persons entrusted to our care.

Guide us, Lord, as we continue to find new ways to offer safe spaces and healing dialogue to survivors of abuse by clergy and by other authority figures in the Church, that we may listen to them with care, learn from them in friendship, enrich our ministries with their unique compassion and wisdom, and help all people recognize in their suffering the face of Your suffering Son, Jesus Christ.

Guide us, Lord, as we continue to find ways to bring Your healing to families of survivors who suffer the wounds of abuse by only one degree of separation, recognizing in each family member the face of Our Lady before the suffering her Son.

Guide us, Lord, as we continue to find ways to care for those parish communities which still bear the wounds of abuse by members or leaders.

Guide us, Lord, as we continue to grow in our care for religious men and women, deacons, and lay ministers, especially victim assistance coordinators, social workers, and therapists, who also bear vicarious wounds from ministering to abused persons, and whose lives of faithful service sometimes were born in their own experience of trauma.

We ask You, Lord, to care for and guide our brother priests, so many of whom have offered care to survivors and families privately over the years, but who nevertheless still carry the unjust burden of guilt by association inflicted by abusers and their enablers.

Grant us, also, in Your Mercy, Lord, some consolation in our grief as we, story after story, bear witness to the depravity and darkness of abuse and the grave impact which institutional failures have on people, those same failures we are committed to avoid.

Oh Lord, with the gifts of Your grace and creative inspiration, may we be ever bold to proclaim the unequivocal Victory by Jesus Christ over all evil and death, including the evil and death of abuse and betrayal within the Church.
Father, we ask these things of You in hopeful confidence in the name of Jesus Christ, Our Lord.

Amen.

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