“No.”
“They are fights, but silly fights. Everybody calls everybody else names. Everybody swears. Well, I do not, Krekor, but you understand what I mean.”
“What do you do? Do you try to convert people?”
“No. I discuss the historicity of the Bible with one or two people who are actually very knowledgeable.”
“It seems like the whole street is having conversations with atheists these days,” Gregor said. “There’s Bennis with that woman, and some group she talked to. It seems odd to me, that atheists would join groups.”
“Why are you so interested in atheism, Krekor? You’re not even interested in religion. You said to me the other day that nobody commits murder for religion, do you remember that? I thought it was silly.”
“I meant that nobody commits these kinds of murders for religion,” Gregor said. “You know what I mean by these kinds. Poisoning. Hiding. When people commit murders for religion, they get a machine gun and raid somebody else’s church.”
“Or the houses of doctors who do abortions, yes,” Tibor said. “So what are you doing here? Hiding from the Philadelphia Police Department? You seem distracted.”
“Pedophiles,” Gregor said.
“You have found more pedophiles?”
“No. No, what you said about pedophiles reminded me. Do you know about that case, the scandal in the archdiocese? I don’t mean have you heard about it, I mean do you know about it, for real, with the details.”
“I know some, Krekor, yes. You would know some, too, if you ever paid attention to the news. I don’t understand why you buy the newspaper. You never seem to read anything in it but the editorial page.”
“It’s the only thing I can be sure is completely accurate. People usually know what their own opinions are. But seriously, that case. How many priests were involved? Were the victims all boys, or were there girls—”
“Wait.” Tibor tapped at his computer. A second later, something came up that seemed to be a list. He tapped again. “Here it is, Krekor. They have a web site.”
“Who has a web site?”
“The victims. I ran into it the first week I was on the Internet. I was looking for religion in Philadelphia, and I found it. They were all boys, yes, Krekor, at least the ones who put up this site. And there were a lot of them. Maybe sixty or sixty-five.”
“Sixty or sixty-five priests were molesting their altar boys in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in the 1960s?”
“No, no,” Tibor said. “You don’t understand. There were not so many priests, maybe five. But one priest can go through many boys—here it is. See, Krekor, the pictures of the priests are here. Mug shots. One of them was already dead when the suit started, though.”
Gregor looked at the screen. “THE SHAME OF CATHOLIC PHILADELPHIA,” the headline read, and underneath it there were what did indeed look like mug shots: five men in early to late middle age, wearing clerical collars. Gregor sat back.
“One of them was dead,” he said. “What about the rest of them?”
“Three are retired, Krekor, and live in retirement homes for priests. The last one was still in a parish when the scandal broke, and he was removed and has been sent to a psychiatric facility. This was a large matter for discussion in the religious community when it happened, Krekor, because there are implications that may not be immediately clear. It is very difficult to defend yourself against a charge that you committed a crime thirty years ago. There are many possibilities for abuse.”
“Do you think that happened here?” Gregor asked. “Do you think the priests may have been innocent, or that some of them were?”
“No,” Tibor said. “In the case of Father Corrigan, the one who is dead, the one who was the most outrageous offender, there are diaries and other material. He kept very good records. The others have all admitted to the crimes. In this case, there are no implications, only mess.”
“What about the one who was still in a parish when the scandal broke?” Gregor asked. “What parish was he in?”
“That would be Father Murphy. He was at Our Lady of the Fields.”
“Had he been there long? Had he been in other parishes?”
“Yes, Krekor, of course he had been in other parishes. That was the practice in those days, when a priest had charges of this sort leveled against him by the parishioners, the archdiocese moved him to another parish. But you have to understand that people did not look on those things then the way we do now. They didn’t understand—”
“No, no,” Gregor said. “I’m not trying to make out a case against the Catholic Church. I’m just trying to figure something out. Was Father Murphy ever at St. Anselm’s?”