The authentic interpretation that tells them they’re allowed to protect child-raping priests at the expense of the children they rape.

On Saturday night Tracey Pirona hugged her husband as she has done many times before, and reassured him: “We’ll get through this.” On Sunday morning she found the letter she had feared for years, and rang police.

John Pirona, 45, of Belmont North, a victim of one of the Hunter’s most notorious paedophile priests, has not been seen or heard from since then. “The longer this goes on the worse I feel about what the outcome’s going to be,” Mrs Pirona said.

Mr Pirona’s letter, with the final words “Too much pain”, leaves no doubt the pain is the sexual abuse he suffered at a Catholic high school and the ugly secrets the church knew, but did nothing to stop.

…

Mr Pirona, a NSW Fire Brigades officer, was sexually assaulted by the priest, who cannot be named for legal reasons, in 1979. He was 13. In a statement to police in 2008 he described the school as brutal, where he feared being bashed if people knew he had been abused.

“Every day to me was just survival,” Mr Pirona said. A court case confirmed he was sexually assaulted several years after the school principal, who cannot be named for legal reasons, and the late Maitland-Newcastle Bishop Leo Clarke, knew the priest sexually assaulted young boys.

In other words the bishop and the principal just left the students hanging there like so many carcasses, for the priest to select at his leisure.

Yet the priesthood continues to think it has the authority to tell nuns what to do.