The sun has been up less than an hour, and already the faithful are filing into Assumption Church's Rosary Chapel for morning prayers.

Women don veils of white lace on their heads, their rosaries at the ready. Inside, a collection of men and women -- mostly seniors -- are already assembled. As the 8 a.m. weekday mass nears, the number of congregants swells to more than 50 -- almost as many as some churches elsewhere can draw on a Sunday.

The members of Assumption, the oldest parish in Canada west of Montreal, are a dedicated flock. The sex abuse scandal enveloping the Roman Catholic Church worldwide has not shaken the foundations of their faith.

Assumption pastor Rev. Paul Walsh, in an interview sanctioned by the diocese first, said he hasn't felt the need to address parishioners on the issue in years, not since former Windsor priest Charles Sylvestre was convicted in 2006 of sexually assaulting 47 girls in a ritual of abuse that spanned four decades.

The soft-spoken priest with the ever-present smile is willing to talk, he says, but nobody is asking. Walsh says he himself feels betrayed by the perpetrators and has been disappointed at times with how the church has handled them. "I wish the church would be less concerned with its image and more concerned with the condition of the victims, what the victims are going through," he said.

"The appearance of defending our actions is very disconcerting."

Each passing week seems to bring new allegations of abuse, or coverups of past abuses. Ireland. Germany. Austria. The Netherlands. Italy. Norway. Some hit home.

Ex-Windsor priest John Duarte this month pleaded guilty to sexually abusing adolescent boys at the mission he founded in Haiti, trading food and other necessities of survival in the impoverished country for sexual favours.

This week, a group of men in the Mediterranean island of Malta, who in 2003 reported having been sexually abused by priests as minors, asked to speak directly with the Pope about their languishing court cases. One of the priests they accuse, Rev. Godwin Scerri, once served in Emeryville and the OPP have resurrected a 1993 investigation into sex abuse allegations against him here.

Until recent days, the controversy had implicated priests and the bishops who protected them. But in the holy week leading up to Easter, the scandal touched the Papacy for the first time. In allegations denied by the Vatican, it is said that Pope Benedict, while a cardinal tasked with