You stood together in a crowd
Holding candles
Praying to Our Lady
For Cardinal Pell.
The tongues of flame
Forced to shine a light in the darkness
he created.
You stood before Her children-
In righteousness indignation
Proclaimed that the cries of
Anger, fear, betrayal and judgement
Aligned us through the Devil’s blood
With evil.
You took your holy pen and
Wrote that it was not your priests,
Bishops, cardinals, or responsibility.
But it was homosexuality.
It was the ability to choose.
But – lest we forget –
your priests did not choose.
Satan tempts them too much.
And so we rose as Christ from the dead.
The spirit of the fires,
lit for sympathy of a man who raped boys after mass,
The spirit of the fires
that burned saints and witches at the stakes,
The spirit of the fires
that raged through the lands you tried to claim,
Rose through the spiral of Notre Dame,
The crackling wood echoed the cries of victims killed by suicide, addiction, silence.
As the world watched,
Our Lady destroyed.
Flannery Quinn 