JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Stepping out of St. John Gualbert Cathedral in downtown Johnstown after midday Mass on Tuesday, Jerry Karafa walked right into the path of a TV news crew from Pittsburgh.

Word of grand jury investigation results released a couple of hours earlier had spread among parishioners quickly. He was frustrated.

“The attorney general is picking on the Catholics,” he said. “They plaster it on national news – everywhere. You don’t hear about the Methodists or the Lutherans. They have problems, too.” 

He called preying on children “a sickness and a disease,” but he sees faithful Catholics banding together, he said.

“Catholics will always be Catholic,” he said. “They will always support the church. The majority of the priests and nuns – 99 percent of them – are good, honest religious people. That’s what I truly believe.”

The Very Rev. James F. Crookston, rector at St. John Gualbert Cathedral, spoke of “dangerous memories” during noon Mass. He used lessons from the parable of the unforgiving servant and a short story by Leo Tolstoy: “A Spark Neglected Burns the Whole House.”

In some ways, Crookston told parishioners, those lessons can apply to the grand jury report. An hour earlier, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane had finished a press conference to release the investigation’s 147-page report on alleged cases of child molestation in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown dating to the 1940s.

The report claims at least 50 priests and religious leaders molested hundreds of children since then.

“It should have never happened, but it did,” Crookston said. “You can remember something a person did but not hold a grudge. But you do have to remember, so it doesn’t happen again and again and again and again.”

Leaving the midday Mass, Jody Ingram shook her head and called the news “disturbing.”

“God bless them, is all I can say. The children – they didn’t deserve it,” said Ingram. “ It’s horrible. It would disturb me if anybody did it – let alone a priest.”

It did not change her feelings on Catholic schooling, though – something she said she firmly believes in. 

“It’s not just priests,” Ingram said. “It’s everywhere.”

Lifelong Catholic Dee Dee Osborne said he’s stunned at alleged cover-ups of the abuse.

“When is it going to stop?” he said. “That’s the question. I feel so bad for the kids, the victims.”

Osborne said he recently watched the movie “Spotlight” – about sexual abuse against children by priests in Boston several years ago – and was mortified at how these types of abuses unfolded,

“It hurts,” he said. “It really hurts.”

Parishioners Joanne and Jack Vasilko said the news is heartbreaking – but that those priests don’t represent the faith. 

“That’s not the church,” Jack said. 

His wife agreed.

“People make up the church, not the priests,” she said. 

Bal is a reporter for The Johnstown Tribune-Democrat.