I stood in the back of the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Washington, where I was a parishioner for nearly 20 years, and I cried.

It was at a Sunday children’s Mass in 2002, and the Rev. Percival D’Silva had just called on Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston to resign for covering up abuses by pedophile priests. At a time when the Roman Catholic Church was in a full defensive crouch, it was incredibly brave for a parish priest to challenge the hierarchy like that. I started scribbling the words of the sermon on the back of the church bulletin.

“I tell you,” he promised, “I will never hurt your children.”

Although I had had my son baptized, confirmed and educated at Blessed Sacrament, I had lost faith in the church as an institution. But Father D’Silva was giving me hope. He was standing by what I was taught were essential values of the church.

Last Sunday , the diminutive priest, now 82 and officially retired, once again affirmed those basic principles and called leaders to account. In his sermon, he spoke of how the “current occupant of the White House spews hatred, bigotry and intolerance” and must resign, I learned from James Zogby, a longtime parishioner who heads the Arab American Institute, an advocacy group. (I now live in the New York area.)