Fr. John Hollowell and Hope for Healing

How one man's painful cross, and recent release from it, just might be a sign of hope for the whole Church

A lot of people in clergy abuse victim/survivor circles know who Fr. John Hollowell is, especially if they've chosen to remain in the Church.

Fr. John is a parish priest with a bit of a following who, back in 2018 when the “summer of shame” happened with Cardinal McCarrick and the Pennsylvania report, prayed that he might be allowed to suffer in some way in reparation. In 2019, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He's received a lot of press coverage and has been very public with the treatment process and what he's gone through since receiving that diagnosis, all the while offering up his suffering in reparation for the sin of clerical sexual abuse.

He recently released a video on YouTube announcing that his brain tumor has been healed since a pilgrimage he took to Lourdes in June of 2022, despite his most recent MRI scans before that showing that the tumor was growing again and would most likely take his life. His healing is pretty clearly a case of divine intervention.

Somewhat to my shame, my first knee jerk reaction to hearing this news wasn't joy. “But…the crisis is still going on” I thought. “Are people like me not worth suffering for anymore?” There are still priests who abuse, and their victims still struggle daily with the consequences of that abuse. It wasn’t that I wanted Fr. John to suffer, but I did take comfort that the ugliness of abuse was symbolized in this man’s suffering, and that kind of prayer was being offered for me and for others like me.

All this went through my head in less than a moment, and then I realized that this man, who has suffered cheerfully for years, had been MIRACULOUSLY HEALED. Fr. John is a person, not a symbol or figure head I can just project myself onto, and this is a beautiful and generous gift from a loving God to a much loved son. He’s a person, with dignity and worth in his own right. I clicked “like” on the video and moved on.

I've thought about it more since then. I hope I'm not reading too much into it, but I wonder if maybe, just as this man's tumor and suffering was a sign to the Church, his healing is a sign too.

Fr. John has offered his suffering as a gift of reparation for the sins of sexually abusive clergy, and united that suffering to Christ's. Just as Christ's suffering was a sign of the ugliness and cost of sin as well as it's remedy, I wonder if Fr. John’s suffering and life is echoing that. The tumor and very public process of fighting it has been a sign of the nastiness and harm that this particular sin has cost the Church. It’s not hard to make the argument that this particular scandal has been like a tumor, growing and disabling the Church from within.

If that’s the case, that this man’s cancer has been a smaller echo of Christ’s passion and has been an illustration of this particular sin consuming and disabling the Church, then I think that the healing of his tumor might be an echo of Christ’s Resurrection. Just as the Resurrection showed us that Christ is victor over sin and death, perhaps this healing is a sign that Christ will ultimately have victory over the tumor currently consuming His bride as well.

I can’t pretend to know this for certain, of course. I’m no mystic or wise contemplative. But I can’t help but see certain echoes and similarities to the gospel that are giving me hope.

God has a deep, unfailing love for Fr. John. He has a deep, unfailing love for those who have suffered from clerical assault too. And I think in this case He's acting from that deep, unfailing love for both.