Father Horne Notes

.

Father Thomas Barry Horne, perpetrator in my story, held retreats for children and priests "in every state of the union" says this news article from 1949, announcing the founding of St. Peter Damian Church, with the handsome traveling "Chicago Archdiocese Missionary Band" member now was now moving permanently to Bartlett, Illinois, to start a parish. (Article is from Aug. 5, 1949, Daily Herald of Chicago. Eternal thanks to Terry McKiernan at Bishop Accountability and Janet Patterson of Kansas for helping me find info on the priest who perpetrated my sister and me.)

According to a 1939 article in Kerrville TX Mountain Sun, the Missionary Band of Chicago Archdiocese was housed in the former home of Mayor Ed Kelly, as he had donated the real estate to Cardinal Mundelein.

"Headquarters of the Chicago Mission Band is the former home of Mayor Ed Kelly which he donated fully equipped to His Emminence." Mundelien was about to start a mission trip which included San Antonio, but he died, so trip cancelled, is what the story in the Texas paper says...

********
In 1964, Horne was "guest speaker" at the Ladies Sodality of Hanover (outside Bartlett) at a meeting announcing their new officers.

Father Horne was always around the ladies, decades after we left Bartlett in 1955. Article was in April 23, 1964, Hanover Park Events column by Jean Wiley...

**************

My sister has a vivid memory of Father Horne in our lives in Bartlett. When he dropped her for me, it created a strange dynamic of jealousy and protection inside her. She went to my father and told him what the priest had been doing to her and was now starting with me. I stood outside a dark wooden closed door in a hall, listening.

Trish later told me, and I remember hearing it: My dad took off his belt and beat my sister for saying such a horrible thing about a man of God....

I was standing outside the door, absorbing it.

Don't be judgemental, in the 1950s people still walloped their kids as a teaching technique. My dad was always a heavy drinker, high achiever, Germanic-Irishman...

*********

In 1997, at my dad's funeral my mom giggled, squirmed, got that icky way it is when old women act sexy, and in a flirtatious voice, she referred to her new freedom now that George was gone. My mom cracked, "Hmm, wonder where Father Horne is today." And she squirmed.

I went beat red and left the room.

I never told my parents what I discovered about Father Horne when I was 45 years old. Actually, once I went public in 1995 or so about Father Horne, other members of my family kept me from ever being able to talk to my parents, probably to keep me from telling them.

Ah, how humans try to evade the real wounds...

Especially Catholics....

****
Truth is I respected my father's feebleness by 1995 and would never have mentioned IT to him. Just out of an instinctive respect, and that frightening Germanic presence, the same man who walloped my sister with a belt for saying out loud what Father Horne was doing to us back in 1953 or so....

He died in 1997.

And my oversexed ex-flapper mom's first thoughts were, wonder where that Father Horne is today. He was so "Ha-a-a-aynd-some..."


I used to hear that a lot in the 1950s around the yard in Bartlett.

"Father Horne is so HANDSOME."
*
Kay Ebeling, producer of this blog, is seeking other victims of Father Thoomas Barry Horne, who sexualized my sister and me in this parish church, when we were pre-school aged children in the early 1950s. Email cityofangelslady@yahoo.com