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.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2l6yoDDLF7
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.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSXtaNER7QU
In confessions.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwWNNyld8dV
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?”8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ38sGMeO1HV
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.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfSIlcuaFmV
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.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVeRtbivSfZ
“I was never going to talk,” she whispered.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH8fHEvwO8x
“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…”8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡES6wzNItqW
“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:8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJmkG5YfBVr
A priest with wandering hands.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwuNT5AQ0vB
A system that chose silence.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3RxkupRVmn
A community that refused to see.
Ella brought in three others.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAuN4c5u6Ha
One with a scar.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0ZMJbqakwf
One with a diary.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7z6mJ0wL44
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?”8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6JG1ZP8QCp
“Young women tend to exaggerate. Especially those with behavioral histories.”8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHpQ3ofdtUo
“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.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIGYWminTQU
Then they revoked his teaching role.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCKC9jyGlVJ
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.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡldZoITnCFJ
“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.”8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyRWC2sWBWh
“I thought I was alone.”8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSD8qN5NebP
“I kept quiet for too long.”
And some of the priests?8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr46tCgWw6D
Some began to confess too.
About drinking. Gambling.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjUOntuBBW6
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.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmPOp2ljXBA
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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