If a Canadian church becomes a rec center, sex abuse victims could pay a price | Rosary and cash
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What should happen to a church whose existence invokes horrible memories for so many people?

That question is at the center of a controversy taking place in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

The Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Portugal Cove-St. Philip’s has been around in its current form for over 100 years, but like so many churches, membership is dwindling and it’s in the process of being sold. It could become a new community center where members of the community could gather for secular reasons—which sounds amazing—but doing so comes with a very serious downside.

To make sense of this story, you need to know what happened at the Mount Cashel Orphanage, in the same province, beginning in the 1950s. This was an institution run by the Congregation of Christian Brothers, a Catholic order, and the site of rampant physical and sexual abuse. In 2020, a Canadian court found that the Archdiocese of St. John’s was legally and financially liable for that abuse, even though they didn’t directly employ the Christian Brothers, because they created an environment where that kind of abuse could thrive. The end result was that the archdiocese was on the hook for millions and millions of dollars in payout to survivors of the abuse.