A Wounded Healer

A Wounded Healer is a novel about a Catholic priest who was accused of sexual abuse of a twelve-year-old boy with Down syndrome. The charge was credible. The boy had been abused. The pursuant criminal trial was inconclusive in that it was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the priest was the perpetrator. The rest of the novel is about the life of the priest whose faculties had been withdrawn, living with that shame, trying to survive in a climate hostile to perpetrators of sexual abuse. He had shamed his family and his faith community. He prayed daily that someday he would be vindicated. In the meantime, God gave him an extraordinary power of healing, which was both a blessing and a cross for him. At the end of the novel, the priest is exonerated and restored to ministry.