Bless Me, Father, For I Have Sinned

A boy is murdered inexplicably by someone he should have been able to trust, his parish priest. In a small town with a police force run by a veteran from the hard streets of a big city, this should have been an open–and–shut case. Everything pointed to the priest as the killer. The investigation revealed something very disturbing about the priest and his relationship to the boy, something unholy. But the power of the church intervened to thwart the investigation. Would justice prevail? How far would the church go to save its image? What happens when a person holds the ultimate power over another in their hands? Do they use it for good or to further their own needs? How can a group that purports to be the representative of the ultimate good harbor such evil?Frank Slater, the Chief of Police in a small western Massachusetts town, is pitted against the Archdiocese of Boston, whose tentacles of control reach all over New England and beyond. He is a savvy cop who, in his twenty years as a detective in Boston, thought he had seen everything. He was wrong. The evil that he uncovers shakes him to the very core, but it also furthers his resolve to bring this murderer to justice.The priest is transferred from parish to parish by the diocese in order to hide him. This provides him access to more soon–to–be victims. With the protection of the church, the priest felt invincible.Sprinkled with local color and stories, Bless Me, Father, for I Have Sinned provides the reader with a critical examination of the church's role in child abuse in the form of a story that will keep the pages turning only to pause to laugh, cry, to be enraged, or to reflect.

-- Peter Caffrey