9th Annual Human Rights Awards - People's Choice Contest

Submitted by: Emily Han Zimmerman

Tom Doyle is a Dominican priest, trained in canon law, who has taken a courageous an open stand, starting in the 1980's, to call attention to the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy, to advocate for the victims, and to ask for institution-wide accountability. He started doing this at a time when his superiors were still committed to covering up the problem, or turning a blind eye. As a result he lost his job at the Vatican Embassy. Although he is a "sung" hero among some people, I am nominating him because I see him as an example of someone who chose personal power over insitutional role power. As an anointed insider, he stood to lose a lot -- and did -- for challenging the system from which his own institutional authority derived. Morally this places him in the ranks of white anti-racist activists, and folks of the ilk of Global Exchange's founders and sustainers...