Dear Friends of Voice of the Faithful,

Thanks to many of you who voted for me in our recent election of national officers, I start my term as president of Voice of the Faithful March 15. On behalf of my fellow officers, I want to express our gratitude for the trust that you have given us. More importantly, though, I want to ask that each of you continue to support us – especially with your prayers! – as we go to work on the goals we have set for the organization.

In asking for your vote, I promised that we would move forward in a decisive way to empower our members at every level of the organization and, in that process, to grow the organization. I said that we need to be speaking out in the “public square.”

Fortunately, we have an unprecedented opportunity right away to make a strong statement about the Church we all love and want to see healed from the wounds of recent years.

That opportunity is the occasion of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States next month.

This is the first papal visit to the US since the true scope of the clergy sexual abuse scandal was made public six years ago. Unfortunately, Pope Benedict’s agenda for the four days that he is here does not include any meetings with survivors of those abuses or any meaningful meetings with the laity. We don’t expect that he will make any public comment on the failure of the US bishops to prevent those assaults on children.

So rather than allow more silence, we will make our Voices heard. I have asked a team of volunteer leaders and staff to prepare an advertisement which we will place in one or more national newspapers in advance of the papal visit.

The message in this ad will be respectful of Pope Benedict’s authority as head of the Catholic Church but it will urge him to recognize the betrayal of trust by our spiritual leaders that still pains so many members of that Church. We will call on him to take action to ease that pain.

We anticipate that this ad will run during the first week in April. As we hone the specifics of its message, I ask for your support for this initiative.

In the meantime, let me also take this opportunity to wish you a prayerful and meaningful Holy Week and a joyous Easter Sunday.

Sincerely,

Dan Bartley

PS Right after Easter, we will launch an aggressive fund-raising drive to seek financial support for the ad. I hope that you will consider a gift in response to that drive. Better still, if you would like to make a contribution to this effort now, please click here to go to the on-line donation page at our website.