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.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXV1m7M1dEf
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.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmKgyXrrA4M
In confessions.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtfUXXpkUZ0
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?”11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsAeWwk3tV2
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.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsvm99r3Vi0
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.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgFjx6toccA
“I was never going to talk,” she whispered.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIGzeYcyjBg
“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…”11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIISDdDzMff
“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:11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDMeD7eYJTB
A priest with wandering hands.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNqTJ2Pag2H
A system that chose silence.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9EYpD5h8oz
A community that refused to see.
Ella brought in three others.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo0cxg0hbCi
One with a scar.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpAzq5sDLyL
One with a diary.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU3JzZwdevS
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?”11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHAnQDgFjlp
“Young women tend to exaggerate. Especially those with behavioral histories.”11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXcYKUFdnPO
“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.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvjnZJFO1C8
Then they revoked his teaching role.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgF6mtjCI4w
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.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOM7Wlk4I9V
“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.”11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjG4t5WRaAr
“I thought I was alone.”11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7sjC7J6gXN
“I kept quiet for too long.”
And some of the priests?11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ92SwzNuzSV
Some began to confess too.
About drinking. Gambling.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpvtgdnpV1Z
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.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOZw1QQuSJt
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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