Chapter Five: Fatherless Kingdoms
Ella once believed in saints.
Not because she prayed to them, but because she thought they looked like her mother—stern and self-sacrificing.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHcjgMVY07H
But after what happened in the retreat house, after the sleepless nights and the blood that didn’t come from her period, Ella stopped believing.
In saints.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡisoJnQmmTy
In confessions.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZD8QpIN8ch
In the power of prayer.
She kept her silence like a badge. A punishment. A prison.
Until one afternoon, three years later, a priest knocked on her dorm room door.
“Ella Martinez?”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbUfHcrDzLy
She nodded, blinking behind her glasses. Her roommate wasn’t home.
“I’m Fr. Ely Bautista. I believe you were once part of Catechism Class ’17?”
She froze.
He didn’t smile. Didn’t pretend to offer healing or platitudes.
He simply placed a folder on her desk. The same folder that once lived under dust and shame.
She opened it.
She saw herself again.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWpxacaOPzR
Smiling. Unaware.
And underneath that photo, she found more. Girls she remembered. Girls who never spoke after that retreat. One who left school entirely.
Her fingers hovered over the image labeled Virgen #8.
“You’re not the only one,” Ely said.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLf4btEmctj
“I was never going to talk,” she whispered.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa77oqq9ODx
“I know. That’s what they’re counting on.”
She didn’t cry.
Not even when he asked if she wanted to press charges.
But her voice cracked only once:
“Will anyone believe me? He’s still a priest. Still saying mass. Still…”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtoexL3WsFd
“Still protected,” Ely finished.
They met in secret.
At coffee shops. Library corners. Empty chapels.
Ely had begun collecting testimonies. Some anonymous. Some from former students now living abroad. A few from women too scared to attach their names—but brave enough to relive their trauma in typed words.
Each account painted the same portrait:9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTchjif6oZm
A priest with wandering hands.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtiac70ExhD
A system that chose silence.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMYYaQyvnPr
A community that refused to see.
Ella brought in three others.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcyNBaUt4q3
One with a scar.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjzy9lbO3jy
One with a diary.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0bedMjQ7JW
One who used to teach altar boys.
By the time they reached ten testimonies, Ely knew this wasn’t just a file anymore.
It was a movement.
A heresy.
A revolution.
The university board didn’t take it well.
When Ely tried to raise it to the Chancellor—a man who once taught him canon law—he was met with practiced smiles and institutional gaslighting.
“Are you certain they’re not… misremembering?”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqXjebLaRSE
“Young women tend to exaggerate. Especially those with behavioral histories.”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ72Z4KFgmaJ
“Let’s not ruin a priest’s life over misunderstandings.”
Ely stared across the oak desk at men in cassocks who once celebrated his ordination.
He realized, in that moment, how little truth mattered in rooms guarded by tradition.
They stripped him of confessional duties.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnkKp3FC5qz
Then they revoked his teaching role.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5duLR4uUEK
Then they asked him to take a sabbatical.
But Ely refused to go quietly.
And Ella? She was just getting louder.
“You can expel me,” she told the Dean.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAi3gxSG9rf
“But you can’t erase me.”
She posted her story anonymously.
Then the stories of others.
And one day, a blog titled Fatherless Kingdoms went viral overnight.
The title came from her last line:
“We were taught to call them Fathers. But they never protected us like daughters.”
In confessionals, people now whispered not sins—but gratitude.
“Thank you, Father.”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnVNu7LbnN1
“I thought I was alone.”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7oDoA6uFUC
“I kept quiet for too long.”
And some of the priests?9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtINpKENlap
Some began to confess too.
About drinking. Gambling.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrpdRWLEhqE
Secret lovers. Boys in the choir they failed to defend.
But not all confessions were safe.
Soon, someone posted Ely’s personal number. His address.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCRzlu65H9u
A warning was painted on his office door:
“Hell is hotter for traitors.”
And in the shadows of the university chapel, someone waited—ready to silence him for good.
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