Father Maurice Restivo urged parishioners to read a letter by Bishop Ronald Fabbro at Sunday mass at the McEwan Campus of Our Lady of the Assumption Parish in Windsor.
Fabbro, the Bishop of London, wrote a letter committing to a safe environment in the church in light of yet another sexual abuse bombshell out of Pennsylvania where more than 1'000 children were abused by priests.
Father Maurice Restivo tells CTV Windsor a culture change is needed and while the upper levels of the church have recognized the appalling abuse, he says real change will come from the grassroots.
"We need to start protecting the people of god rather than each other, we in the clergy," he says. "As long as our hierarchical structure remains the way it is across the church, not only locally but universally, that we're going to have great difficulties because one tends to protect ones own."
Roberto Deluca is a life-long catholic and says while the abuse is horrific, rot can always be found in giant structures.
"I say to myself, 'wow, am I in the right place, maybe I should stop being a Catholic, maybe I should become an atheist?' The organization can become corrupt just like any other organization and then I start to think of all the saints, all the miracles, all of the things that were done well in the world," says Deluca.
For Patrick McMahon, that rot has meant real-world consequences as he suffered abuse in his early teens.
His abuser was the now deceased Father William (Hod) Marshall, a former high school teacher at Assumption and Holy Names High School, who served 16 months in jail after admitting in June, 2011 to sexually abusing 17 young people.
"Many, many of those years were extremely painful. Life was not something I wanted. If I could have said -- you know they say it's a gift from god, I gladly would've gone to the exchange department and turned it back in. I didn't want to be here.
McMahon attended the mass on Sunday to put a face to that abuse and Father Maurice who first reached out as parishioners streamed out of churchÂ
He says something Father Maurice told him did help ease his burden a little bit.
"He opened our conversation by asking how he could share in my pain, and that was very powerful to me, I appreciated it, because if I could share my pain with all the people in the Catholic Church, there would be no abuse of children ever again. No one wants to experience that pain," says McMahon.