There are certain times in everyone’s life where it is required of them to be vulnerable. A baby relies on its caretaker with its entire life. Not unlike how dementia patients rely on their nurses. Sometimes we get sick and need to go to the hospital, where a doctor can oversee our recovery. Boy scouts count on their leaders to teach them just as we rely on our president to lead us.
However, sometimes — more often than we’d like to admit — we are taken advantage of. When someone is in a position of power, like, say, a priest, or a teacher, we put our faith in them that they won’t abuse it. Not so long ago, it was unheard of and offensive to suggest that people of influence and prestige could also be dangerous, even deadly. Our current social climate has slowly been forced to accept the fact that despite the status or identity of an individual, they are equally capable of crime and deserving of equal punishment.
A former Catholic priest, John Feit, was arrested in Texas in February 2016 for a murder committed in 1960. He is now 85; most Americans only live to 80. Fortunately, the statute of limitations does not apply to murder, as it does to rape. His trial began three weeks ago. Irene Garza, 25, was a devout Catholic and beauty queen. On April 16th, 1960, Irene borrowed her parents’ car so she could go to confessional for midnight mass. They never saw her alive again. Her car was left parked near the church, and many witnesses attest that Irene was in church that day, and that was the last they’d seen her. The next day would be Easter, which is probably the most sacrilegious day to commit a murder inside of a Church. Irene would be discovered a week later in a local canal. Few clues were left except a slide viewer discovered at the bottom of the canal.
Although the physical evidence was slim, rumors began churning about town. Father Feit, then 27, admitted several different stories in the weeks after the murder to the higher priests. The priests told police that they knew nothing of the murder. One thing was clear: he had been the last person to see Irene alive. He had taken her from the confessional to the rectory, supposedly for more privacy. He claimed that she then left, alive. Many church members recall Feist’s absence from the ceremony, and later one of the priests recalled deep scratches up Feit’s hands. Feit admitted publicly that the slide viewer found in the canal was his; however, he claimed he doesn’t know how it ended up with the body of Irene.
To make matters worse, a week before Irene’s murder, another young woman of similar appearance, Maria America Guerra, was attacked in a sister church not 15 miles from the Sacred Heart Church in McAllen. Maria recalled seeing a man fitting John Fiet’s description before she was attacked from behind. She managed to escape. Nonetheless, nobody really believed her when she said she thought it was a clergyman who assaulted her. She told authorities after Irene’s murder, “The priest at Our Lady of Sorrows said he knew that rumors were going around about a priest being involved in Irene’s murder. He told us, ‘It is impossible that a priest would commit a crime like this. Don’t speak of it. Don’t even let yourselves think it.’”
That is the narrative that the church was pumping out in a desperate attempt to either save face or deny involvement. It is only now, after new-old evidence has come to light, that we know the full extent of the church’s involvement in covering up Irene’s murder.
Two polygraphs were taken by Father Feit, and both incriminated him. In 1962, he was tried for the assault of Maria. The jurors could not come to a decision, and a mistrial was declared. Despite the clear evidence, he was fined and set free. It wouldn’t be until 2016 when he would be charged with murder. In an attempt to console Irene’s family, Father O'Brien promised them that if any wrongdoing was suspected, God’s will through the church would punish him. After being transferred, Feit left the church in 1972 and enjoyed a life with a wife and three children — one that Irene would never be able to experience.
In 2002, Joseph O'Brien and Dale Tacheny confessed. They told authorities of the secrets that haunted them and the church. They told them that Fiet confessed to them and others shortly after Irene’s death, but it had been decided that the Church could not handle such a scandal. Fiet had taken Garza that day, heard her confession — and in her moment of honesty, bravery, and vulnerability, he murdered her. The man who was supposed to represent God, the man who was supposed to grant her forgiveness, took her life. How could someone who has taken such an oath do this? And more importantly, why?
The answer is sad but stark: because he could. The title of Priest instantly grants you a status of trust and compassion — and Feit took his position in stride to lure Garza away that day. It wouldn’t be for another 14 years that anything was done with these confessions. The District Attorney at the time disregarded the case as too old and too flimsy. So, with the help of the church, the state, and the citizens, this guilty man stayed free. All the institutions that we are told to trust failed Irene Garza, Maria Guerra, and the countless other victims that could be because this dangerous man was allowed to go unpunished. The Catholic Church knew and did nothing. They double-downed on their assertion of purity, and with it, the public consciousness remained ignorant, and for that, they are guilty. The events of this story seem to suggest that the systems that we rely on to keep us safe can also put us in danger.
Since the 1960s, it has become more and more evident that abuse trickles down. Those who are abused tend to abuse themselves. Those who are abused overwhelmingly tend to be hurt by those in their family, or by someone they know rather than strangers. What we couldn’t have fathomed in the 60s is all too real in 2017. It was happening then just as it does now, but now the conversation is out there.
It is now a socially accepted trope for a priest to be a pedophile. Instead of laughing it off as we do in Moliere’s "Tartuffe," a 1664 play about an imposter sexually-deviant priest, we are forced to face a terrible truth. People can and will abuse your trust. The systems in which we govern ourselves can and will abuse our trust. It is inevitable that people will slip through the cracks, and it is people who create and manipulate those cracks.
Despite the size and scope of those fissures, there will always be people working to close them. In 2014, the new district attorney Ricardo Rodriguez opened the case of Irene Garza once more, 54 years after her death. He found more than enough evidence to make his case. On December 7, 2017, Feit was found guilty of Irene’s death, and on December 8, 2017, at 85, Father Feit was sentenced to (what's left of his) life in prison.
