“I shall continue to remember you and your family in my prayers.”
How dare you pray for me Devenish. How dare you offer me your prayers. You, Father Martin Devenish, were given the opportunity to meet me. To meet me in a way that was based around an honesty and a truthfulness that now seems to be beyond your understanding. You have no idea of the importance that that meeting would have been to me and my family. You chose the way of the weak and the frightened. You did not choose the way of the committed Christian. And yet, Father Martin Devenish, you are still a holy priest. You still think you are in a position where you can pray for me. I, unfortunately do not get that.
….a reminder of what I wrote, and a reminder of the responses from you and your confreres.
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When I wrote to Bishop Giuseppe Zenti, the Bishop of Verona, in 2010 to inform him about Nardo living in the Comboni Mother House in Verona, I had a similar reply that you had – not from the Bishop, but fromhis Vicar General, Giuseppe Pelligrini.
“Assure you of our prayers” and “the people involved fall within the competence of the Superior General of the Comboni Missionaries,” was his response. In other words: ‘nothing to do with me.’ Terrible really.
I took the advice of Pelligrini, the Verona Vicar General, and wrote to Father Enrique Sanchez, the Superior General of the Comboni Missionaries.
Sanchez’s response was: “Please be assured of my continuing prayer,” and “at the end of the day, Mark, we are all in the hands of God. May He go with you always.”
My reply: “where were the hands of god when I was being abused by the hands of a priest.”
I received a similar response from the Verona Bishop, Flavio Roberto Carraro in 2002. Carraro’s Vicar General, also offered to say prayers for me and, yes, he also said: ‘nothing to do with me.’
I am not short of people praying for me!
When I wrote to Father Martin Devenish, the Provincial of the Comboni’s London Province, in 2001, he, also offered prayers: “I am sorry that I can do no more in the circumstances, although I shall continue to remember you and your family in my prayers.”
I wonder if the above are still praying to their god for me now.
Mark Murray
Comboni Missionaries 
I think that the order are in need of our prayers now .I will be thinking of them as ,not if ,they are called to explain their actions before a independent enquiry.The shoe is now on the other foot.Time is their only hope.As the clock slowly winds down let’s hope that they are experiencing some of the turmoil and anguish that they have caused and ,directly or indirectly ,supported.
Remember “As ye sow so shall ye reap”
Farmers Weekly I think?
Degs
… or could it have been The Archers
I remember a conversation in St Peters kitchen in which I was informed by two boys that bread was made from dogs tails. This statement made, by the two boys, may have been made as a result of mental illness and my attempts to correct it, at the time, by telling the truth, I now understand, could have been better handled. I was about eleven years old. One of the boys did help me to write a letter to my family and to my great embarrassment I did not say, ‘Thank you,’ in a sincere manner. I now offer my apologies. In the parable, ‘The publican did indeed, ‘Hardly lift his head..’ He was a far more humble man than the parrot who has been typing this reply in an attempt to change what can be changed and the opportunity to do so comes because the merciful and infinite love of God has provided it.