Women rebuilding faith and community in the aftermath of the sexual abuse crisis in the Chilean catholic Church.

This paper presents findings from an ethnographic study of women survivors of clerical sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in Chile, exploring their struggles with faith in the aftermath of trauma. The first section addresses the survivors' crisis of belief, examining how sexual abuse shatters their trust in Church authorities, doctrines, symbols, and rituals. It investigates how survivors reconstruct their images of God, seek alternative spiritual sources, and develop new rituals aimed at healing and meaning-making. The second section shifts focus to the ecclesiological and communitarian dimensions of survival, critiquing clericalism and its patriarchal structures. It explores how these women form new communities of solidarity within, in the margins, or outside the Church. The paper emphasizes the spiritual resilience of these women in creating spaces of belonging and communal support, in the aftermath of experiences of violence, exclusion, and marginalization within the Catholic community.