Status of the St. Peter Damian Society

In the autumn of 2018, revelations of sexual abuse by the now-former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick galvanized a small group of lay Catholics to form the Saint Peter Damian Society. The Society was founded to call for the repentance of Church leaders, to propose reforms aimed at combating clerical sex abuse, and to encourage prayer by the laity, especially through devotion to St. Peter Damian.

Over the years, the Society has continued to work toward those goals. One of our most significant acts was the commissioning of a Western-style icon of St. Peter Damian by Gwyneth Thompson-Briggs, and the mailing of that image to every bishop in the United States as a reminder to them of their duty to prevent and punish deviancy and abuse in the priesthood.

The Society has always relied on the work of a small number of lay people. Over the years, the temporal duties of the Society’s members have left them with insufficient time to devote to the Society. For this reason, the Society will no longer be active. Going forward, we do not intend to comment on current news items, or otherwise regularly provide new content, either on the website or on social media. However, the website will remain up as a resource for devotion to St. Peter Damian, and a continuing challenge to Church leaders to take their responsibilities seriously. From time to time, additional commentary on Saint Peter Damian and the abuse crisis may be posted, but this will not be done regularly.

We will continue to keep one section of the website current: the page tracking the application of Vos estis lux mundi. Such updates take relatively little time and we believe that the faithful will benefit from continuing to have a comprehensive source on Vos estis investigations in the United States.

We thank all of you who have supported our mission and ask that you continue to pray with us for the Church and for the victims of clerical sex abuse.

St. Peter Damian, pray for us.