Newall: Victim of priest waits for Phila. Archdiocese to help him before he dies

Brian McDonnell lies in his small, dark room under the crucifix on his wall, praying Hail Marys on his blue plastic rosary beads. Symbols of a church that had forsaken him, but one that he has never abandoned.

He worries that he is dying. It is all he thinks about.

"I don't know how long I'm going to last," he said the other afternoon. "I just feel like I'm fading quick. I just fall asleep saying Hail Marys."

Brian suffers from schizophrenia, dementia, and depression. The manifestations of his mental illness are inextricably intertwined with the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of a priest as an altar boy at now-closed St. Gregory's in West Philadelphia.

"He suffers delusions because he cannot reconcile his faith in the Church with what happened to him," prosecutors wrote in the 2003 Philadelphia grand jury report on sexual abuse in the archdiocese.

Brian is wasting away.

He is 70. He believes he's 121. He believes he is "half Jesus" and "100 percent Michael the Archangel." He believes he has raised the dead.

In his lucid moments, he tells stories of his football career at Villanova University - he played guard - or cries over the four children he so often forgets he has.

This is what he believes about Gerard Chambers, the priest who molested him, the priest who was shuffled among 17 parishes - and even an orphanage - before finally being removed from active ministry in 1963: He must have been a secret agent sent by England's House of Lords to disgrace the Catholic Church.

He believes this because he cannot believe that a priest could ever do the things Chambers did to him.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has helped cover the costs of Brian's mental-health care since 2004. That happened only after his brothers, John and Alex, who also were molested by Chambers, confronted the church about the abuse they had held secret for decades.

Now that care has deteriorated. And his family wants the church that Brian still has so much faith in to do more to help. For a long time, Brian had been thriving in a senior living facility in Haverford. It was clean and cared-for, and felt like a small apartment. He could walk to Mass every day.

Brian's decline began two years ago, his family members say, when the archdiocese-recommended psychologist overseeing his care failed to notify them that Brian's psychiatrist had died. Brian went 18 months without proper supervision, they say. He wasn't taking his medicine.

This past Thanksgiving eve, Brian became threatening. He was committed to the crisis center at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in Darby. They sent him to a Lansdowne senior center, where he remains. It's a far cry from the Haverford facility. A small, bare room, and none of the care he was getting before.

Alex McDonnell, 73, says archdiocesan case managers handling Brian's case aren't offering any help in finding Brian a better place, one where he can get help. They want him to find it.

Just send the bill, they tell him. We'll let you know.

"It's fallen all to my family," he said.

Sadly, advocates say, the McDonnells' experience is all too common for victims of clergy sexual abuse in Philadelphia, where the church seems to confuse footing a bill with real compassion.

When I called the archdiocese's Victim Assistance Program, a woman who answered the phone said she could not give out information and hung up.

An archdiocesan spokesman told me that "out of respect and sensitivity" they are not permitted to speak on any victim cases.

Meanwhile, Brian lies in his dark room, praying his Hail Marys, worrying that he will die soon.

He believes God hears his prayers. I hope the archdiocese does.

"Say a prayer I live longer," he told me when I left him.

I will.

mnewall@phillynews.com

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