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Pioneer expert in clergy sexual abuse inspired with 'courage'
Richard Sipe, a psychotherapist and former Benedictine priest who warned about the sex abuse crisis enveloping the Catholic Church, died Aug. 8 in La Jolla, California. He was 85.
According to The New York Times, the cause was multiple organ failure.
Sipe's full name was Aquinas Walter Richard Sipe (the Aquinas was added during his years as a Benedictine). He became alarmed at the sex abuse crisis after hearing stories, in his role as a psychotherapist, of both abusive priests and their victims.
Beginning in the 1960s, he wrote and spoke to bishops and the general public on the topic. The author of scores of articles and books on celibacy and sexuality, Sipe concluded that only about half of priests in the United States were at any one time practicing celibacy, and that about 6 percent sexually abused children, a number he later raised to 9 percent.
Sipe became a pioneer in systematically exploring data on the crisis.
He was a confidante to journalists, including The Boston Globe team that broke the scandal in the Boston Archdiocese in the early 2000s. His disembodied voice, frequently heard over the telephone as played in the movie "Spotlight" by actor Richard Jenkins, advised journalists about both the inside workings of the church and howsex abusers were able to infiltrate its ministries.
Much of his work was done in tandem with Dominican Fr. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer who also was an early critic of the church's stance on sex abuse. "Dick's impact was profound," said Doyle.
"His research and advocacy together. they changed the direction of the trajectory of the history of the church, not only in the United States but worldwide," Doyle said. "The work he did on celibacy, especially priestly celibacy, nobody else had the courage to do it. And when he and his results and his work were condemned by the institutional church, he kept plugging and of course everything he said was proven right."
"No one did more for the cause of people abused by clerics and to aid the...