‘I saw you from the sidelines and I am your father’

A story of a priest’s child, lost In Norwich

I was walking my dogs, with my eyes on them and half watching my phone, when an email came through from the UK. I often get an email from African countries, South America or parts of Asia and have to translate them later on in the day, but this was close to home. I had no idea how close to home it was in reality. The email informed me, “I am the son of a priest,” a regular occurrence on my morning walk with my beloved dogs, Marley, Teddy, Bobby and Joey. This email would bring about a change in me, a most positive change, a blessing in fact, and maybe it was a priest blessing me.

Father Patrick Crowe was born in the West of Ireland to simple parents, and, like many young men, he would go on to become a Catholic priest. His studies would see him go to the Philippines and end up in the United Kingdom. He would eventually meet a woman, and he would eventually fulfil the word and title that was bestowed upon him, “Father”. As the years drifted on, Aidan Wilson grew up suspicious, a characteristic so common to priestly children, never sure, rarely questioning, but when they do, it’s right on point. It’s that itch that often exposes so many hidden truths buried by popes, priests, Cardinals, priests and religious.

Aidan was a great footballer, but wasn’t supported, not as he should have been, not as a young boy should be supported; he was given hand-me-downs that were falling apart. And even still, with falling apart hand-me-downs, he still amazed his peers on the field. I know as much about football as I do about the eating habits of giraffes in Africa on a Wednesday; however, I am told, he was gifted. And he was and is a gifted human being, but his giftedness does not cease when the final whistle blows; it merely begins.

I believe, deeply embedded in a worn trenchcoat, some blustery afternoon was an old man, decades ago, with a hat shading His face, a shabby beard, but somehow familiar to us all. He saw a gifted young boy; was he a scout? Kind of, I believe God saw the effortless joy that spilled from his toes and said to Himself, “he’ll work for me now,” before fading into the distance unnoticed.

Aidan Wilson is the son of Father Patrick Crowe (RIP), who hailed from the West of Ireland, and what’s funny about it is, when I call him, I see an Englishman who loved football. However, his heart truly beats with the wildness of the West of Ireland, troubled, angered, beaten, but surviving in all of the beauty that encompasses God, that spills from His hands, through the worn football boots of a very young boy being watched by a little old man, unknown by so many.

Aidan’s story was printed in the Daily Mail on a Sunday in Ireland and made the front page, so I won’t rehash it here; it’s available to read by clicking this link. Mr Wilson, like so many endless, invisible, small children, was hidden, was held back, was denied, was neglected, and yet, despite what clericalism threw at him, his brilliant spirit rose above it all and survived. He is the living image of his deceased father, the Very Reverend Father Patrick Crowe. We often joke, he and I, that he is a in fact Vatican spy (which he is certainly not) and that Aidan doesn’t exist and it’s all a ruse to keep an eye on me, the Irish troublemaker! But Aidan’s suffering was real, and so was that of his father and mother. However, they didn’t have a choice, and today many questions lie unanswered, questions that Mr Wilson now seeks answers for.

Turning back to the Church, just as that young boy turned to his coach, manager and players who kicked a football in a park with him half a century ago, he turns open-eyed, eager with willingness and yet questioning what he should do. It’s an unmerciful thing to do to a child – to throw abuse in the face of innocence – and still, it happens.

Children of priests experience coercive control, anxiety, neglect, severe disinheritance, slander and yet we rise above it, surviving and calling for justice. If that is not Catholic, I do not know what is.

I wonder of that man on the sidelines who saw Aidan, a man hidden and unknown; who knew that he would suffer, and in true scriptural style, a metanoia occurred, a change of heart and his suffering eucharistically turned Aidan’s suffering into the antidote for the decades of suffering that his mother and father bore to their death, and that for me is evidence of the risen Christ.

Today, Mr Wilson lives in Norwich. He is a family man, an animal lover, a husband and a granddad. He loves all things UK, loves his footie, but regularly, that sparkle in his eye, a shine that only an Irish person, or a descendant of an Irish person, can see, shines… and the trace of his ancestral home shimmers, if only for a second, and it’s a thing of beauty.

Aidan is on a journey. I feel so privileged to walk with him, because simply put, this is the only case where Coping has gained more than it has given, for in him, I have truly found a brother, with whom I will walk until Our Father says, “Amen, it is done my boys, come home, your father awaits.”

I urge you, read Aidan’s story, seek understanding, just as you do seek the understanding of the world behind the text, for there is always hidden beauty and meaning. Isn’t that God, so subtle, so demure, so clever.

Indeed, only God could write straight on a crooked path.