Unjustly in Prison for 30 Years: A Collision of Fury and Faith

From opposite ends of the world Pornchai Moontri and Fr Gordon MacRae share thoughts on a dark milestone: Thirty years wrongly in prison on the Day of Padre Pio.

September 18, 2024 by Pornchai ‘Max’ Moontri and Fr Gordon MacRae

HERE’S MAX

On September 8, 2020, I left my best friend, Father-G, inside the walls of New Hampshire State Prison where we spent the previous 15 years as cell mates. The term, “cell mates” might seem foreign to you. Having to share a space of about 60 square feet around the clock with another human being can be like torture. The daily drama of cell mates thrown together but never able to live together was the all-day every-day prime time drama of our prison.

I was an angry young man with a very short fuse which caused me to spend most of my prior years in prison in solitary confinement beginning at age 18. I was not very sociable. I trusted no one, and least of all could I trust a priest convicted of the very crimes that tormented my life and set me on a road to destruction. We went through a lot in those years, and over time I came to know with total certainty that this priest was a victim of false witness and a Catholic witch hunt. He became my best friend and the person I trust most in this world. We became each other’s family.

I know in my heart that I would not be free today — physically, mentally, or spiritually — if Father-G had not been present in my life. I wake up each day now on the other side of those stone walls of prison and on the other side of the world from where Father-G lives in captivity still. I now live in Thailand, a land I was taken from at age 11 for someone else’s dark agenda. It is a land I thought I would never see again. I am here today, and free, only because of God and His servant, Father-G.

The day this little introduction appears with Father-G’s post is September 18. It anticipates the September 23rd date on which he was sent to prison thirty years ago in 1994. There was no truth or justice in it. None at all! That is also the date that one of our Patron Saints was freed from another kind of bondage — a bondage that has been a grace for millions of souls. Father-G once described the heroic virtue of the life Padre Pio lived ...

“A half century bearing the wounds of Jesus — all of them, including false witness, rejection, ridicule, public shaming, and the crucifixion of his body and his priesthood, sometimes even by the very Church he served.”

With some help from Dilia, our Editor, I wrote a whole post about this day, about Father-G, and about the sacrifices he made that restored my life and freedom, and saved my soul. I would trade them back to restore his freedom, but he will have none of that. He said that sacrifice is sacred and it is not refundable. I hope you will read my post for it is very important to me. It is my tribute to hope from a time when all mine was stolen from me so Father-G sacrificed his. It is “On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized.”

Now here, from our prison cell thousands of miles away from where I wake up each day in freedom, is Father-G:

Parallax Views and Inflection Points

On the night before starting my part of this post, I called my friend, Pornchai-Max in Thailand. He asked me how I feel about approaching a 30th year in prison for crimes that never took place. I spent much of that night rehearsing in my mind a long angry rant. How could intense anger not be part of the equation of how I face the injustice, corruption, a cover-up by police and prosecutors and lawyers and judges who heard and ruled on their corruption in secret? How could I feel anything but fury for the people who profited from it all? In the fictitious case against me alone, a million dollars changed hands.

If you have been following publications by Dorothy Rabinowitz, Claire Best, Ryan MacDonald, and a few others over recent years then you are already familiar with all this and there is no need for me to waste your time ranting about it. It would indeed be a waste of my time and yours.

I thank my friend, Max, for his part in this post, and in this story. He and our editor, Dilia E. Rodríguez, have conspired to point me toward a parallax view. That’s a scientific term for what happens when an event or series of events is observed from a new position or angle with insights that were limited or unavailable before. In his introduction, Max mentioned a post he wrote with Dilia’s help just after his return to Thailand in 2020. It is linked at the very end of his Introduction and again at the end of this post. It is very important, and it is my parallax view.

And in recent weeks in these pages, Dilia E. Rodríguez wrote “From Arizona State University: An Interview with Our Editor.” It, too, presents a parallax view, a summary of these 30 painful years in this abomination of unjust imprisonment. Dilia’s conclusion was in part about the mystical connections between me and Max now living on opposite sides of the planet, and the introductions of two Patron Saints into our world. Padre Pio and Maximilian Kolbe are inflection points in both our lives in and beyond these stone walls.

In science and history, an inflection point is a point at which, usually only in hindsight, an event becomes pivotal, and, once experienced, all perceptions about it change. When I could bring myself, through grace, to look beyond my fury over wrongful imprisonment, our Patron Saints became inflection points and the powers that bind us. Even my language describing this needs a background explanation. To “look beyond my fury over wrongful imprisonment” recalls vividly another “inflection point” that occurred in a dream.

I know I risk sounding a little pretentious here, but in that dream I was instructed by a nighttime visitor on October 2, the Feast of the Guardian Angels, to “look beyond the prison lights,” and when I did, my eyes were opened. I hope to return to this in a week or so in these pages when I write about the Great Patron of Justice, Saint Michael the Archangel.

Prison is not a good place. Let me put that differently. Prison is not a place where much good happens. But what good DOES happen in prison is often spectacular and it accomplishes spectacular things. One could easily dismiss those things as mere coincidence. I did just that for a long time. But a steady stream of graceful events in a place where grace seems otherwise to be entirely absent brings us back to seeing the ordinary as extraordinary. Saint Paul described such a place permeated by the light of faith: “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” (Romans 5:20)

Convergence : St Maximilian Kolbe Lets Himself In

In my twelfth year of priesthood, I was convicted in a sham trial after refusing multiple plea deals to serve only a year or two in prison. My refusals were met with fury by Judge Arthur Brennan who ridiculed and mocked me before imposing on me a sentence that would live longer than I would live.

The numbers are important. In my twelfth year of priesthood I went to prison, and in my twelfth year in prison, I came as close as I ever had or ever will to despair. The year was 2006. The series of “accidents” leading up to this point are, in hindsight, astonishing. From seemingly out of nowhere, I was contacted by a priest who arranged with this prison’s Catholic chaplain, a deacon, to visit me, though I never understood why. In the previous 12 years, not a single priest had ventured behind these prison walls. Father James McCurry is a Conventual Franciscan priest who said only vaguely that he heard or read about me somewhere and felt compelled to reach out (or in) to me.

In the prison visiting room, his first words after shaking my hand were, “Have you ever heard of St. Maximilian Kolbe?” Fr McCurry told me that he had been the Vice Postulator for the cause of sainthood leading up to St. Maximilian’s canonization in Rome in 1982, the year I was ordained. On the twelfth anniversary of that canonization, and my ordination, Father McCurry felt compelled to visit me. The visit had to be brief.

The year was 2006. One week later, I received in the mail a letter from Father McCurry along with something that I should not have received. It was a laminated holy card depicting Maximilian in both his prison garb from Auschwitz and his Franciscan habit. I should not have received it because laminated cards had been strictly banned for security reasons then. This one, however, mysteriously made its way from the prison mail room to my cell. I was mesmerized by the image on the card. On the backside was “A Prisoner’s Prayer to St. Maximilian Kolbe.” It was about despair.

I taped the card to the top of the battered steel mirror in my cell. It was December 23, 2006. Then I realized with near despair that on that very day, I was a priest in prison one day longer than I had been a priest in freedom. I was losing myself. There is nothing here that supports in any way an identity of priesthood. The image on the mirror impacted me greatly, and painfully. It was three years before Beyond These Stone Walls would begin with my first post, “St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Man in the Mirror.”

Months earlier, unknown to me at that time, another prisoner was dragged in chains out of years in solitary confinement in a Maine prison and shipped against his will to New Hampshire. After several weeks in “the hole” in high security housing, he arrived on the pod where I live. Walking around the pod to stake out his new turf, a very tough-looking Thai fighter stuck his head in my cell door. Upon seeing the image of Maximilian on my mirror, he stared at it for a time, and then he stared at me asking, “Is this you?”

This man had been through a lot, and was a little rough around the edges. The only part of that he might disagree with today is “a little.” He wore the wounds life had inflicted on him like a shield of armor to keep everyone else away. Everything about him spoke “dangerous,” and indeed he was at times. He had a short fuse, and that kept everyone else at a safe distance — except me.

We somehow became friends. He paid rapturous attention to the story of St. Maximilian Kolbe’s life and especially how his earthly life ended as he gave it over to the Nazis, his false accusers, to spare the life of a despairing young man. My inflection point with Saint Maximilian was this: The image on my mirror was not about all that I had lost. It was about all that I was called to become. Like Maximilian, I could not change my prison. Not one bit. I could only place it in service to my priesthood.

Saint Maximilian, in turn, led both Max and me to the Immaculata. Through his Divine Mercy Sunday conversion and his consecration to the Lord through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Pornchai Moontri took the name Maximilian. Like many in Sacred Scripture, a new name also came with a new life.

Over at our Voices from Beyond section this week, we are featuring “Mary is at Work Here” by Felix Carroll first published in Marian Helper magazine (Spring 2014). It tells the story of Mary, Maximilian, Pornchai-Max, and me, and the wonder of Divine Mercy we embraced as it also embraced us.

Out of Time and Space, Padre Pio

Our second inflection point — the point at which our spiritual fortunes changed — was Saint Padre Pio who is venerated in the Church calendar on the same date on which I was wrongly convicted and sent to prison. It is also the date Padre Pio died. This was briefly alluded to by Max in his part of this post, but I would like to expand on it a bit because I know that Max will be reading this from half a world away.

Because of the connection between Padre Pio and the date of my imprisonment, I decided to write a post about this mysterious saint. Padre Pio died in 1968 when I was fifteen years old and had just begun my return to a long neglected Catholic identity. I today cannot articulate what exactly called me to that change in such a tumultuous time as 1968. I wrote a story about the calumny and false witness Padre Pio suffered in his priesthood. It was that which I could initially most connect with. The post was titled, “Saints Alive! When Padre Pio and the Stigmata Were on Trial.” It was published in the early days of this blog.

After I wrote it, I received a rather frantic letter from the late Pierre Matthews in Belgium. Pierre learned about me from a lengthy 2005 article by Dorothy Rabinowitz in The Wall Street Journal. He and I exchanged several letters back in the few years after those articles first appeared in 2005. Pierre was alarmed about my Padre Pio post. He urgently wanted me to know that he had a personal encounter with Padre Pio when he was 15 years old.

Like many in Europe at that time, Pierre’s father had sent him to a boarding school. The school was sponsoring a train trip to a few points in Italy. When Pierre’s father learned of this, he sent Pierre a letter instructing him to take a train to a place called San Giovanni Rotondo, and go to a Capuchin Friary. Pierre was instructed to ask for a blessing from Padre Pio.

Pierre was skeptical, but did as his father asked. He took a train to San Giovanni Rotondo, and rang the bell. A friar answered the door and led young, nervous Pierre to a foyer. Pierre asked to see Padre Pio. “Impossibile!” the friar snapped back. He gave Pierre a prayer card and started to usher him back toward the door.

Just then, from a wide staircase leading to the foyer, a bearded Capuchin with bandaged hands came slowly down the stairs with eyes focused on Pierre. Padre Pio approached him while the astonished friar at the door whispered in Italian, “Do not touch his hands.” Padre Pio then placed his bandaged hands on Pierre’s head and spoke a blessing, making the Sign of the Cross.

Sixty years later, when Pierre read at Beyond These Stone Walls that Pornchai Moontri had decided to become Catholic and would enter the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010, Pierre pleaded with me to ask Pornchai to allow him to act as Godfather to sponsor his reception into the Church. Then, again, things that should not have happened did happen. Pierre could not attend a Baptism in the prison chapel so I acted as proxy. But he could arrange to visit either me or Max in the prison visiting room a few days before. Under the rules, he could be on the visiting list of only one of us. That rule was impenetrable, firmly embedded in stone.

“The worst they can say is no,” Pornchai said. So I wrote to the prison warden and explained the details. The request came back miraculously just in time. It was approved that Mr. Matthews could visit with both of us on the same day, but separately. This was, and still is, unheard of. Pierre told us both the story I told above — the story of his strange encounter with Padre Pio many years earlier.

In his visit with me, Pierre bowed his head and asked for my blessing. It was one of the most humbling experiences of my life. I placed my hand upon Pierre knowing that the spiritual imprint of Padre Pio’s blessing was still in and upon this man, and I was overwhelmed to share in it.

I do not fully understand the mystery of what happened to the angry priest who pondered prison and the fate of his priesthood, or the angry young man who pondered the deep wounds life had inflicted upon his body, mind and spirit. We are both still here, and on opposite sides of the planet now, but we are both also changed. As I am typing this, a friend sent me a letter with a brief prayer at the top. It is a parody of the Serenity Prayer, and it could now be the prayer of my priesthood:

“God, grant me
Serenity to accept the people
I cannot change,
Courage to change
the only one I can, and the
Wisdom to know
that it’s me!”

Thank you for reading these stories of our lives. May the Lord Bless you always, and keep you.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. We hope you will subscribe if you haven’t already. It’s free, and we will usually haunt your Inbox only once per week. You might also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls :

‘Mary Is at Work Here’ — a Marian Helper presentation

On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized

The Assumption of Mary and the Assent of Saint Maximilian Kolbe

Saints Alive! When Padre Pio and the Stigmata Were on Trial

From Arizona State University: An Interview with Our Editor

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A Special Note to our Readers: Thank you for your readership and support of this blog. As annual fees become due, Father Gordon could use your help if willing and able. Additionally, we have been notified that the National Center for Reason and Justice is ceasing operations after two decades of advocacy and sponsorship of the defense of Father MacRae and other wrongfully convicted.

For any future defense of Father MacRae it is imperative that the National Center for Reason and Justice website at ncrj.org remain active and in place. It contains volumes of crucial legal information on the Father MacRae case and must be preserved or all will be lost. We have been granted permission from the NCRJ to take over management of its site and preserve its contents. This will add to our annual operating expenses. If readers are able to help, it would be greatly appreciated.

Please see Contact and How to Help

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

From Arizona State University: An Interview with Our Editor

Having pondered the project questions from a student at Arizona State University, the Editor of Beyond These Stone Walls tells the story of this prison journal.

September 4, 2024 by Dilia E. Rodríguez, PhD, Editor

Prelude from the Student:

“Truth in its simplicity, revealed by suffering, carries a quality in writing. I believe this is what has drawn me to Beyond These Stone Walls and retained my readership over the years when there is not a single other blog or newspaper that I read consistently. I believe it is also a mercy of God that I have been able to read authentic Catholic voices here regarding the tumultuous current events in our world because it has helped keep my Faith alive despite much darkness. I chose this topic because I love God and wish to glorify him.”

— an Arizona State University student

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How did you discover Beyond These Stone Walls, and how did you become the Editor?

I had never heard of Father Gordon MacRae or this blog. On the Feast of Saint Joseph in 2019, I searched “Pope Benedict XVI on St. Joseph,” and the fourth or fifth result was one of Father MacRae’s articles. I read several others, and I read his story at the About Page.  Deeply saddened, I wanted to help with my prayers and in any other way I could.  On the Feast of the Annunciation, I sent him a letter introducing myself and offering to be a Simon of Cyrene to him.

A priest friend of Father MacRae in North Carolina had been volunteering as acting editor for the previous few years while also having been given additional parish assignments. I was close to the end of my career as a civilian scientist for the United States Air Force. I had been pondering retirement for some time and this volunteer work for Beyond These Stone Walls seemed a perfect fit for me as I now manage all the nuts and bolts of a widely-read popular Catholic blog written under the most unusual conditions.

What is the process for you to receive posts from Father MacRae, post them, and then send the comments to him?

From inside a small prison cell, Father MacRae types each post on his old typewriter and mails it to me.  I scan it using optical character recognition software.  With the typewritten post he includes a description of the suggested images he would like to include above each section of the post, as well as at the top.  Beyond These Stone Walls was built using Squarespace, which also hosts it. Using its services I compose text, images and links to create the post on the blog. We publish every Wednesday morning, and send out an email alert to our 2,000 or so direct subscribers.  But the readership of this blog is much larger.  Many people go directly to the posts without subscribing.  We also publish the posts on some social media such as Gloria.TV where Father MacRae has been given a page. His Christmas post about shepherds had about 50 thousand readers, many in some of the poorest parts of the world such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Father Gordon has never actually seen his published posts. As a prisoner he has no access to the online world and has never seen any social media where his posts are published.

Prisoners cannot receive calls.  So when Father Gordon calls me I read him the comments that have been posted on BTSW and some of the ones that have been posted on social media.

Do you believe your Faith life has changed since taking on this position?  Why or Why not?

Beyond These Stone Walls shines a light on how Father Gordon MacRae is sharing in the Cross of Jesus.  It nourishes me with his example and meditations.  It reports on what is happening in society and in the Church, which corporate media and many Catholic media do not.  Without Beyond These Stone Walls and the witness of Father MacRae I would miss much of what is going on in the world and in the Church, in which Jesus wants me to be His instrument.  I pray that I may hear His voice and do whatever He tells me.

Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”  In my youth I had an agnostic period in which I agonized in search of Truth.  Jesus, Truth, attracted me to Him. Father Gordon MacRae has most beautifully and faithfully answered Jesus’ ardent prayer to the Father, “Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.” (John 17:17)  When the corrupt and perverse “justice” system wanted him to lie about having committed crimes that never happened, he did not lie.  As punishment Judge Arthur Brennan sentenced him to life in prison.  Almost everyone abandoned him.  But he clung to Truth, to Jesus.  He is a model and a challenge to me and many, a light in the darkness.

This is a time in which astoundingly many are “those who call evil good, and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20).  I ask myself what does Jesus want me to do.  He says, “Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves.” (Mt 10: 16)

In the midst of so much evil in our time, the Catholic sexual abuse scandal is most significant.  Many outside and within the Church seek to confuse what is evil and what is good concerning this scandal.  There are two wrongs: the abuse of young people by priests, and the false accusations of abuse of young people by priests.  The latter wrong remains hidden from most, deceptively presented as the first wrong by an industry of lawyers, “victims’ advocates,” attorneys general, and anti-Catholic bigots; and very sadly and scandalously, by a bishops’ policy that encourages and promotes this evil industry. Father MacRae wrote of how this has evolved in his own diocese in To Fleece the Flock: Meet the Trauma-Informed Consultants.”

Had I not crossed paths with Beyond These Stone Walls and Father Gordon MacRae, I would not know about the false-accusation industry.  I have come to believe that as ugly and depraved as the secular world has become, and as the Church is beset by multiple problems, it is the explosion of false accusations of priests that is the worst ever attack on the Church, the most diabolical attack on the Body of Christ, and therefore the world.

The immediate victims are the falsely accused priests.  Their reputations are destroyed.  The search for the truth of the accusation is nonexistent. The reputation of all priests is tarnished.  The laity are also victims of this attack on the Church.  Billions of dollars have been handed out to those who claimed to have been abused.  No billionaire donated these funds.  Dioceses have been bankrupted. Parish life has been affected.

And incredibly the worst members of this false-accusation industry are (most of) the bishops.  In 2002, the Dallas Charter was adopted over the objections of Cardinal Avery Dulles, Father Richard John Neuhaus and a few others.  The bishops adopted the “credible” standard, a fig-leaf term to convey a sense that accusations are investigated.  They are not.  I remember a couple of readers commenting that in their dioceses their bishops investigated the accusations, proved they were false, and the false accusations ceased. 

Knowing that it is Jesus Who calls a man to be a priest, it is unimaginable that a bishop would discard a priest without a most thorough investigation.  But it is a policy that has been enforced for over two decades.  It masquerades as compassionate.  It is an evil being called a good.  The cruelty and the attack on priesthood it represents is astounding.

Shamelessly, quite a few years after the Dallas Charter was adopted, when there was talk of extending the “credible” standard to accusations against bishops, the USCCB got lawyers to begin defining the term [The Credibility of Bishops on Credibly Accused Priests].  This year the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire dropped altogether the fig-leaf term. Any priest accused of sexual abuse of a young person will be added to the list that publicly shames, and discards priests.  The “credible” standard, as weak as it is, has been discarded. The accuser will be monetarily rewarded.  Apparently, it should cross no one’s mind that handing out large sums of money would ever entice false accusations.  Again, evil gets presented as good.  Twenty-two years after the Dallas Charter was adopted a new generation of bishops upholds it.

How can this be anything but a diabolical, concerted effort to destroy priesthood, to destroy the Church?

How does this affect my Faith?  This is not a superficial, little problem that for the most part I can forget while I go on with my life.  With “fear and trembling” I ask, “What do You want me to do?  Open my ears that I may hear.  Without You I can do nothing,”

Certainly, it is a privilege for me to use my time and talent to help project the voice of Father Gordon MacRae outside that prison in New Hampshire as he tries to open minds and hearts to the truth of what is happening in the world and in the Church, to Truth Himself.

As to my treasure, I micromanage my donations.  I have stopped donating to the lukewarm and to those who wittingly or unwittingly collaborate with the Father of Lies in trying to destroy priesthood, and I support some of the courageous people and entities that unceasingly defend and proclaim truth.

I pray that my righteousness may surpass that of the scribes and the Pharisees.  I am sickened when I hear priests, bishops or the Pope consider every accusation of a priest to be true, as well as the media and lay people.  May Jesus teach me to love them as He loves them.

What are your favorite things about editing BTSW? What are your least favorite?

It is a privilege and a joy to work with Father Gordon and watch his creativity as he directs me to edit an article on the fly.  I want what we post to be beautiful and enjoy creating images to make it so.  I want as beautiful images as I can get, and that usually takes me quite a bit of time.  What I like least is not finding good images, or finding them but not being able to use them because they are copyrighted.

One of my other least favorite things, though it has come to some good, is the ocassional post that gets lost or delayed in the U.S. mail. Our choices in those weeks are to either skip a post entirely or for Father MacRae to slowly dictate a 2,000-word article to me by telephone.

What articles do you remember most? Why?

It is amazing the breadth of topics that Father MacRae tackles, from Scripture to history, to science, to current events.  And he writes about his life.  Pure evil placed him where he is, and he is sharing in the Cross of Jesus, but he shows how in magnificent ways God is ever present to him.

His Scripture articles are full of facts and striking insights.  The collection of Holy Week posts is a gift.  Another example is, “Casting the First Stone: What Did Jesus Write On the Ground?”  Father MacRae brings out in fascinating detail the interplay between the law of Moses and the Roman law, and how Jesus’ response is a trap of the Pharisees.  It seems to me that this and other Scripture articles need a second or third reading to fully grasp and appreciate the depth of what he is presenting.

Father Gordon loves science, especially cosmology.  Many think or accuse the Church of being anti-science, but that has never been true.  Not only have there been scientists in the Church, but some of the most significant advances in science were introduced by priests.  For example, the father of modern genetics was a monk, Gregor Mendel.  And a hero of Father Gordon discovered the Big Bang, Father Georges Lemaitre.  He had known about Lemaitre for years, and was most flattered when in response to a letter he sent to Carl Sagan about his novel Contact, Sagan replied to Father MacRae, “You write in the spirit of Georges Lemaitre!”  But God was not pleased to leave it just at that, He decided to make the most extraordinary connections between Father MacRae and Father Lemaitre.

Though Father Gordon has written several times about Father Lemaitre, maybe the most significant post on this subject is “Fr Georges Lemaître, the Priest Who Discovered the Big Bang.”  It is an article about the great scientist Father Georges Lemaitre, co-written with noted physicist Father Andrew Pinsent, a research scientist at the University of Oxford. The article had two postscripts by Father Gordon MacRae.  In the article Father Pinsent writes, “Among Catholics with some kind of popular outreach, Fr Gordon MacRae through his widely-read blog has done more than almost anyone I know in recent years to draw attention to Fr Lemaître.”  For his part, Father Gordon recounts that after reading one of his posts on Belgian priest-scientist Lemaitre, Belgian BTSW reader Pierre Matthews, who is Pornchai Moontri’s Godfather, wrote to tell him that Fr. Lemaitre was his Godfather.

What makes the breadth of articles so surprising is that in prison, Father MacRae has no online access at all and no resources for research.

Initially, I was struck by how many posts are about or mention Pornchai Moontri.  After a while I came to think that their profound bond was like that of friends who endure the horrors of war together and survive.  Now I think that it is much more profound than that.

God has inspired many truth seekers to investigate the case of Father MacRae: Dorothy Rabinowitz, Harvey A. Silverglate, Ryan A. MacDonald, Dr. William Donohue, David F. Pierre, Jr., Father James Valladares, former FBI Special Agent Supervisor James Abbott, and investigative reporter Claire Best.  Any fair-minded person who studies their work is convinced that a corrupt system put him in prison and Father Gordon MacRae is innocent.

But God wanted to reveal this with more than facts.  He would reveal it with the powerful transformation of lives and souls.  Pornchai had been viciously sexually and physically abused for years by a man who trafficked him from Thailand at the age of 11 and murdered his mother.  Pornchai escaped and lived on the streets for all of his teen years.  Then at age 18 he killed a man who tackled him and pinned him to the ground.  After years of enduring violent sexual abuse this sent Pornchai into a rage.  He spent the next 13 years in solitary confinement.  He was then sent to the prison that houses Father Gordon.  Having learned that he had been convicted of sexual abuse, Pornchai should have wanted to stay as far away as possible from Father Gordon.  Yet, they became friends and then Pornchai asked Father Gordon if he could be his cellmate. 

On the other hand, the corrupt and evil people who railroaded Father Gordon derailed his priesthood, took his freedom and viciously defamed him.  It should be noted here that to their great credit, Vatican officials have not dismissed Father MacRae from the clerical state.

Most in the Church who should have stood by him instead abandoned him, or even worse denounced him.  If this is how people in the Church treated Father Gordon, how much more understandable it would have been had Pornchai looked at him with suspicion and distrust.  Yet, Pornchai has said that Father Gordon is the person in the whole world whom he most trusts.  That must be a precious balm that heals Father Gordon’s heart.  Many posts describe this most extraordinary friendship.  Most important among them is Pornchai’s own words in, “On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized.” 

Though the suffering of Father Gordon MacRae’s cross has not abated in 30 years, God has not abandoned him.  He has sent Father Gordon two special friends who let him know that he is not alone: the prisoner-priest Saint Maximilian Kolbe; and the stigmatist and mystic, who was accused of sexual abuse and attacked from within the Church, Saint (Padre) Pio of Pietrelcina.  Two of my favorite posts describing their presence in Father Gordon’s life are “St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Man in the Mirror,” his first encounter with Saint Maximilian Kolbe; and “Saints Alive! When Padre Pio and the Stigmata Were on Trial,” a very interesting post, which among other things describes a most special blessing that connected Father Gordon, Pornchai Moontri and Saint Padre Pio through time and space.

Have any comments left an impression on you? Why?

One of the early comments on BTSW was that of Deacon David Jones:

“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path.  Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

I think Father Gordon deserves such a testimonial.

In 2010 Father MacRae’s blog was selected by readers of Our Sunday Visitor as The Best of the Catholic Web in the area of Catholic spirituality. About.com selected it as the second-place finalist for the Best Catholic Blog Award. Readers at the Fishers Net Award selected it as The Best Catholic Social Justice Site.

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Beyond These Stone Walls is a prison journal. Evil people did much to destroy the lives of Father Gordon J. MacRae and Pornchai Maximilian Moontri. But as this blog documents, their story is one of priesthood, sacrifice and conversion writ large. They met in the New Hampshire Prison for Men in Concord, New Hampshire, but as we have seen in some posts God had much earlier connected their lives in some intriguing ways. Into these lives weighed by deep suffering Divine Mercy entered at first in hidden ways, and then it overwhelmed them.

Shortly before the nightmare of arrest, trial and wrongful imprisonment, Father MacRae was invited to write an intention to be placed on the altar for the Mass of Beatification of Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska. He wrote:

“I ask Blessed Faustina’s intercession that I may have the strength and courage to be the priest God wants me to be.”

His strength and courage would be sorely tested. After six long years in prison he celebrated his first Mass on April 30, 2000, which unbeknownst to him was the day Pope John Paul II canonized Saint Faustina and the first official Divine Mercy Sunday.

Six years later at a most dark period in Father MacRae’s life and priesthood, Franciscan Father James McCurry, who had been a vice-postulator for the cause of sainthood of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, visited him and asked him, “What do you know about Saint Maximilian Kolbe?” Thereupon began a most special friendship between these prisoner-priests.

At just this time Pornchai Moontri was transferred from solitary confinement in Maine to the New Hampshire prison. When he first entered Father MacRae’s cell and saw Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s image on a card, half in the garb of a prisoner and half in the garb of a priest, he asked, “Is this you?” Father MacRae writes, “From that moment on, we were caught up in the light of Divine Mercy.” Pornchai’s conversion was set in motion by Father Gordon’s example and writings. Pornchai Maximilian Moontri was received into the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2010.

When they both learned that at the end of Pornchai’s prison term he would be deported to Thailand, the prospect seemed dismal. He had been taken from there decades earlier, he did not speak the language, and no one would be waiting for him. But Father Gordon said, “We will just have to build a bridge to Thailand.” And so it happened. Today Pornchai Maximilian Moontri lives in Pak Chong, Thailand and continues to be active in this blog.

Pornchai has recently been selected to represent Father Gordon MacRae and the group, Divine Mercy Thailand, at the Fifth Asian Conference on Divine Mercy in the Philippines this year. For Father Gordon, this is the best evidence that Mary is still at work here.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. We are simultaneously publishing the article by the Arizona State University student at the Voices from Beyond page:

A Voice for the Voiceless: Beyond These Stone Walls

You may also like these related posts:

A Mirror Image in the Devil’s Masterpiece by Dilia E. Rodríguez, PhD

Convicted for Cash: An American Grand Scam by Frank X. Panico

Betrayed by Victims’ Advocates by Anonymous

Simon of Cyrene Compelled to Carry the Cross by Fr Gordon MacRae

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner

A Parable of Divine Mercy: Pornchai Moontri had a first birthday in freedom on September 10. One third of his life passed in a prison cell with a Catholic priest.

September 8, 2021

Jesus taught in parables, a word which comes from the Greek, paraballein, which means to “draw a comparison.” Jesus turned His most essential truths into simple but profound parables that could be easily pondered, remembered, and retold. The genre was not unique to Jesus. There are several parables that appear in our Old Testament. I wrote of one some time ago — though now I cannot recall which post it was — about the Prophet Jonah.

The Book of Jonah is one of a collection of twelve prophetic books known in the Hebrew Scriptures as the Minor Prophets. The Book of Jonah tells of events — some historical and some in parable form — in the life of an 8th-century BC prophet named Jonah. At the heart of the story, Jonah was commanded by God to go to Nineveh to convert the city from its wickedness. Nineveh was an ancient city on the Tigris River in what is now northern Iraq near the modern city of Mosul. It was the capital of the Assyrian Empire from 705-612 BC.

Jonah rebelled against the command of God and went in the opposite direction, boarding a ship to continue his flight from “the Presence of the Lord.” When a storm arose and the ship was imperiled, the mariners blamed Jonah and cast him into a raging sea. He was swallowed by “a great fish” (1:17), spent three days and nights in its belly, and then the Lord spoke to the fish and Jonah “was spewed out upon dry land” ( 2: 10) . ( I could add, as a possible aside, that the great fish might later have been sold at market, but there was no longer any prophet in it!)

Then God, undaunted by his rebellion, again commanded Jonah to go to Nineveh. Jonah finally went, did his best, the people repented, and God saved them from destruction. Many biblical scholars regard this part of the Book of Jonah as a parable. Jesus Himself referred to the Jonah story as a presage, a type of parable account pointing to His own death and Resurrection:

“Some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, 'Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.' But he answered them, 'An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given except the sign of the Prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days in the belly of the giant fish so for three days and three nights, the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.”

— Matthew 12:38-40

What I take away from the parable part of the story of Jonah is that there is no point fleeing from “the Presence of the Lord.” God is not a puppeteer dangling and directing us from strings. Rather, the threads of our lives are intertwined with the threads of other lives in ways mysterious and profound. I have written several times of what I call “The Great Tapestry of God.” Within that tapestry — which in this life we see only from our place among its tangled threads — God connects people in salvific ways, and asks for our cooperation with these threads of connection.

The Parable of the Priest

I was slow to awaken to this. For too many days and nights in wrongful imprisonment, I pled my case to the Lord and asked Him to send someone to deliver me from this present darkness. It took a long time for me to see that perhaps I have been looking at this unjust imprisonment from the wrong perspective. I have railed against the fact that I am powerless to change it. I can only change myself. I know the meaning of the Cross of Christ, but I was spiritually blind to my own. Ironically, in popular writing, prison is sometimes referred to as “the belly of the beast.”

After a dozen years of railing against God in prison, I slowly came to the possible realization that no one was sent to help me because maybe I am the one being sent. My first nudge in this direction came upon reading one of the most mysterious passages in all of Sacred Scripture. It arose when I pondered what exactly happened to Jesus between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, the three days He refers to in the Sign of Jonah parable in the Gospel of Matthew above. A cryptic hint is found in the First Letter of Peter:

“For it is better to suffer for good, if suffering should be God's will, than to suffer for evil. For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, in which he also went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison who in former times did not obey.”

— 1 Peter 3:17-20

The second and much stronger hint also came to me in 2006, twelve years after my imprisonment commenced. This may be a familiar story to long time readers, but it is essential to this parable. I was visited in prison by a priest who learned of me from a California priest and canon lawyer whom I had never even met. The visiting priest was Father James McCurry, a Conventual Franciscan who, unknown to me at the time, had been a postulator for the cause of sainthood of St. Maximilian Kolbe whom I barely knew of.

Our visit was brief, but pivotal. Father McCurry asked me what I knew about Saint Maximilian Kolbe. I knew very little. A few days later, I received in the mail a letter from Father McCurry with a holy card (we could receive cards then, but not now). The card depicted Saint Maximilian in his Franciscan habit over which he partially wore the tattered jacket of an Auschwitz prisoner with the number, 16670. I was strangely captivated by the image and taped it to the battered mirror in my cell.

Later that same day, I realized with profound sadness that on the next day — December 23, 2006 — I would be a priest in prison one day longer than I had been a priest in freedom. At the edge of despair, I had the strangest sense that the man in the mirror, St. Maximilian, was there in that cell with me. I learned that he was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1982, the year I was ordained. I spent a lot of time pondering what was in his heart and mind as he spontaneously stepped forward from a line of prisoners and asked permission to take the place of a weeping young man condemned to death by starvation. I wrote of the cell where he spent his last days in “Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Gift of Noble Defiance.”

On the very next day after pondering that man in the mirror on Christmas Eve, 2006 — a small but powerful book arrived for me. It was Man’s Search for Meaning, by Auschwitz survivor, Dr. Viktor Frankl, a Jewish medical doctor and psychiatrist who was the sole member of his family to survive the horror of the concentration camps. I devoured the little book several times. It was one of the most meaningful accounts of spiritual survival I had ever read. Its two basic premises were that we have one freedom that can never be taken from us: We have the freedom to choose the person we will be in any set of circumstances.

The other premise was that we will be broken by unending suffering unless we discover meaning in it. I was stunned to see at the end of this Jewish doctor’s book that he and many others attributed, in part, their survival of Auschwitz to Maximilian Kolbe “who selflessly deprived the camp commandant of his power over life and death.”

The Parable of a Prisoner

God did not will the evil through which Maximilian suffered and died, but he drew from it many threads of connection that wove their way into countless lives, and now I was among them. For Viktor Frankl, a Jewish doctor with an unusual familiarity with the Gospel, Maximilian epitomized the words of Jesus, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

I asked the Lord to show me the meaning of what I had suffered. It was at this very point that Pornchai Moontri showed up in the Concord prison. I have written of our first meeting before, but it bears repeating. I was, by “chance,” late in the prison dining hall one evening. It was very crowded with no seats available as I wandered around with a tray. I was beckoned from across the room by J.J., a young Indonesian man whom I had helped with his looming deportation. “Hey G! Sit here with us. This is my new friend, Ponch. He just got here.”

Pornchai sat in near silence as J.J. and I spoke. I was shifting in my seat as Pornchai’s dagger eyes, and his distrust and rage were aimed in my direction. J.J. told him that I can be trusted. Pornchai clearly had extreme doubts.

Over the next month, Pornchai was moved in and out of heightened security because he was marked as a potential danger to others. Then one day as 2006 gave way to 2007, I saw him dragging a trash bag with his few possessions onto the cell block where I lived. He paused at my cell door and looked in. He stepped toward the battered mirror and saw the image of St. Maximilian Kolbe in his Franciscan habit and Auschwitz jacket and he stared for a time. “Is this you?” he asked.

Within a few months, Pornchai’s roommate moved away and I was asked to move in with him. Less than four years later, to make this long and winding parable short, Pornchai was received into the Catholic faith on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2010. Two years after that, on the Solemnity of Christ the King, 2012, we both followed Saint Maximilian Kolbe into Consecration to Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Most readers likely know by now the depth of the wounds Pornchai experienced in life. He was abandoned as a child in Thailand, suffered severe malnutrition, and then, at age eleven, he fell into the hands of a monster. He was taken from his country and the only family he knew, and was brought to the U.S. where he suffered years of unspeakable abuse. He escaped to a life of homelessness, living on the streets as a teenager in what was to him a foreign land. At age 18, he accidentally killed a much larger man during a struggle, and was sent to prison.

Pornchai’s mother, the only other person who knew of the years of abuse he suffered, was murdered on the Island of Guam after being taken there by the man who abused him. In 2018, after I wrote this entire account, that man, Richard Alan Bailey, was brought to justice and convicted of forty felony counts of sexual abuse of Pornchai. After the murder of his mother at that man’s hands, Pornchai gave up on life and spent the next seven years in the torment of solitary confinement in a supermax prison in the State of Maine. From there, he was moved here with me.

Over the ensuing years, as I gradually became aware of the enormity of Pornchai’s suffering, I felt compelled to act in the only manner available to me. I followed Saint Maximilian Kolbe into the Gospel passage that characterized his life in service to his fellow prisoners: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

I asked the Lord, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to free Pornchai from his past and the seemingly impenetrable prisons that held him bound. I offered the Lord my life and freedom just as Maximilian did on that August day of 1941. Then I witnessed the doors of Divine Mercy open to us.

This blog began just then. In the time he spent with me, Pornchai graduated from high school with honors, earned two additional diplomas in guidance and psychology, enrolled in theology courses at Catholic Distance University, and became an effective mentor for younger prisoners in a Fast Track program. He tutored young prisoners in mathematics as they pursued high school equivalency, and, as I have written above, he had a celebrated conversion to the Catholic faith, a story captured by Felix Carroll in his famous book, Loved, Lost, Found.

Pornchai became a master craftsman in woodworking, and taught his skill to other prisoners. One of his model ships is on display in a maritime museum in Belgium. His conversion story spread across the globe. After taking part in a number of Catholic retreat programs sponsored by Father Michael Gaitley and the Marians of the Immaculate Conception, Pornchai was honored as a Marian Missionary of Divine Mercy. So was I, but only because I was standing next to him.

One of the most beautiful pieces of writing that has graced this blog was not written by me, nor was it written for me. It was written for you. It was a post by Canadian writer Michael Brandon, a man I have never met, a man who silently followed the path of this parable for all these years. His presentation is brief, but unforgettable, and I will leave you with it. It is, “The Parable of the Prisoner.”

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Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Gift of Noble Defiance

Book: Man’s Search for Meaning

Book: Loved, Lost, Found

The Parable of the Prisoner

Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: On September 10, Pornchai will mark his 48th birthday. It is his first birthday in freedom. In 2020 on that date he was just beginning a grueling five months in ICE detention awaiting deportation. For the previous 29 years he was in prison. For the four years before that he was a homeless teenager having fled from a living nightmare.

I asked him what he would like for his birthday, and this was his response:

“I have never seen the ocean. I would like to go to the Gulf of Thailand and visit my cousin who was eight years old when I was eleven and last saw him. He is now an officer in the Thai Navy.”

Please visit our “SPECIAL EVENTS” page, and our BTSW Library category for posts about Pornchai.

A Priest and Prisoner in the Light of Divine Mercy

Fr Seraphim Michalenko, Fr Michael Gaitley, Fr Richard Drabik, Fr Gordon MacRae, Marian Helper Editor Felix Carroll and Pornchai Moontri in a wondrous Divine Mercy drama.

As a young man, I depended far too much on my own resources. I recognize today in the humility of hindsight that they were never quite up to the task. But back then, I knew everything. What a dumbass I have since become! I now know nothing, and cannot write a single word except in the light of Divine Mercy. My life’s path recalls the words of Dante Alighieri as he opened his epic literary masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. His story begins in a dark forest on Good Friday in the year 1300:

“When I had journeyed midway upon our life’s path, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the way that does not stray. How can I say what wood that was, that savage forest which even now in recall renews my fear? So bitter death is hardly more severe! But to tell the good I found there, I will also tell of the other things I saw.”

— Dante Alighieri, The Inferno, Canto I

In my post two weeks ago, “Wrongful Convictions: The Other Police Misconduct,” I told of some of the other things I saw — a forest of dark things like corruption and deep injustice surrounded me once. Like Dante, I cannot tell of these — though they must be told — without the light of a profoundly wonderful grace I discovered amid all that suffering.

In many posts over time, I have told snippets of the story of Divine Mercy, of how it entered midway upon my life’s journey, and of how it dramatically transcended my prison walls. I have never before put it all together in a post, and I cannot pretend to do so now because it would fill a book. Perhaps one day, if I have the tools to do so, this story will become a book. For now, however, all I have is this humble blog.

What prompted this retelling of my Divine Mercy journey is the death of Father Seraphim Michalenko, MIC, who on this Earth became a driving force in the beatification and canonization of St. Maria Faustina and the promotion of her famous Diary. My friend, Marian Helper Editor Felix Carroll, published a moving eulogy which included this paragraph:

“Father Seraphim Michalenko, MIC, the world-renowned expert on the life and spirituality of St. Faustina — the man who smuggled photographic images of the pages of St. Faustina’s Diary out of Communist-occupied Poland in the 1970s and later documented her beatification and canonization miracles — died Thursday, February 11, 2021, from illness related to Covid 19. ... Side by side with Blessed Michael Sopocko, Pope St. John Paul II, and St. Faustina herself, Fr. Seraphim stands as a central figure who helped make the Divine Mercy message and devotion the greatest grassroots movement in the history of the Church.”

— Felix Carroll in "Rest in Peace, Fr. Seraphim Michalenko, MIC"

A few years ago, well into his eighties, Father Seraphim ventured from his home at the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts for a drive of several hours to Concord, New Hampshire. He came to offer Mass in prison, and to interview Pornchai Moontri and me about the substance and source of our Divine Mercy journeys as we passed through the dark wood of prison.

My story, which I have told before, begins in 1988. Father Richard Drabik, MIC was Provincial Superior of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception, a post from which he wrote the Preface for Divine Mercy in My Soul, also known as the Diary of Saint Faustina. You will find his Preface at the beginning of every copy of this mysterious book.

A few years later when he concluded his term as Provincial, Father Drabik was recruited to be a spiritual director for the Servants of the Paraclete Renewal Center for priests in New Mexico where I once served as Director of Admissions. Father Richard became my spiritual director for several years, and the finest one I ever had as a priest.

Grace Follows Even the Darkest Night

I will never forget the moment Father Richard stopped by my office one night early in April, 1993 to tell me that he would be leaving that week for Rome to take part in the Beatification of Sister Maria Faustina by Pope John Paul II on Divine Mercy Sunday. Father Richard invited me to write a private intention to be placed on the altar for the Mass of Beatification. Then I promptly forgot all about it.

Saint Faustina was later canonized by Pope John Paul II on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2000, a saint canonized by a saint. Now that I think of it, the saints who have had the most influence on my life as a priest and as a prisoner, and ultimately also on Pornchai Moontri’s life, were canonized by Pope John Paul II. Besides Saint Faustina they include Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Saint Padre Pio, and the Beatification of Mother Teresa.

I know the latter two do not retain their Earthly titles, but I cannot imagine calling them anything else. These influencers now also include Saint John Paul II himself who left a giant footprint on both the Church and my life as a priest.

I knew nothing of Saint Faustina when Father Richard made his request, and if he ever spoke of Divine Mercy in our sessions, I retained none of it. If memory serves, I did most of the talking in spiritual direction. I hope I have since learned to listen as well. Father Richard, like many at the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy, is still in contact with me. I hope he might be reading this.

A week or so after inviting me to write my intention for the Mass of Beatification in Rome, I had forgotten all about it. Father Richard stopped by my office again on the night before his departure and reminded me of it. I was especially busy with God only knows what. I told him I would bring it to him in ten minutes. I then grabbed a piece of note paper and quickly wrote this spontaneous prayer:

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“I ask Blessed Faustina’s intercession that I may have the strength and courage to be the priest God wants me to be.”

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I sealed my intention in a small envelope and brought it to Father Richard. I watched him tuck it into a pocket of his jacket, and thought no more of it. The Beatification of Saint Faustina was presided over by Pope John Paul II on Divine Mercy Sunday, the Sunday after Easter, but it was not yet called that. It was on the day of St. Faustina's Mass of Canonization, on April 30, 2000 during the Great Jubilee Year that Pope John Paul II declared in his homily that from hereon the Second Sunday of Easter will be the day of Divine Mercy.

But none of this meant anything to me. Today, it means everything to me. By the time Father Richard returned from Rome after the Mass of Beatification in 1993, I had been arrested on false charges from the distant past, and taken away. In 1994, after refusing multiple “plea deal” offers to plead guilty and serve one year in prison, I was sentenced to a term of sixty-seven years. That story is conveyed in the post cited above.

I spent the next twelve years in the dark forest of Dante’s Inferno. I heard from no one. I communicated with few. In all that time, I somehow retained an identity as a priest. Because I maintained my innocence, I spent all that time in punitive prison housing with eight men sharing each cell. An officer in that unit saw that I had a typewriter so he asked me to volunteer to type some inventory forms for him each week. After a few weeks he asked me if I wanted something in return. He meant extra food. I asked for the use of an empty storage room for one hour on Sunday nights to offer private Mass.

A Summons to Divine Mercy

It was not what this Sergeant expected to hear. He said he would have to present the unusual request to his own supervisor. Holy Week was coming up, and I hoped I might have an approval by Easter. It came a week too late. My first Mass in prison was offered in a storage closet on April 30, 2000, which I only later learned was the first official Divine Mercy Sunday and the day Saint Faustina was canonized.

That was year six, midway in my twelve years in darkness. Six years later, I was visited in prison by Father James McCurry, who is today the Minister Provincial of the Franciscan Friars Conventual of the Our Lady of the Angels Province. Unbeknownst to me at the time, he had also been a vice-postulator for the cause of sainthood for Saint Maximilian Kolbe who was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1982, the year I was ordained. Father McCurry learned of me from some other priest. He was in the area and thought he would arrange a visit.

His first words in the visiting room, after introducing himself, were, “What do you know about St. Maximilian Kolbe?” I knew little beyond the fact that he offered his life to save that of another prisoner in the horror of Auschwitz. We talked about that but our visit was brief. He had to catch a plane. He said he would be sending me something. A week later, a small biography of Saint Maximilian arrived along with a card depicting him in both his Franciscan habit and his Auschwitz uniform.

By that time, I had been moved to slightly better prison quarters, perhaps thanks to the Sergeant who was impressed that I asked for a place to offer Mass instead of extra food. I put the image of Saint Maximilian on the battered steel mirror in my cell. Through tears, I realized that on that same day I was a priest in prison a day longer than I had been a priest in freedom. The darkness I felt was overwhelming. I would eventually write multiple posts about the impact this Saint has had on our lives, most notably “Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Gift of Noble Defiance.”

Shortly after Saint Maximilian arrived on the mirror in my cell, Pornchai Moontri was sent here after fourteen grueling years lost in and out of solitary confinement in a Maine prison. I was bitter and he was broken. All hope had virtually died in our lives. Providence moved Pornchai from one place to another here, and then he ended up living with me. In his moving recent guest post, “Free at Last Thanks to God and You,” he recounted the day he first walked into my cell and saw the image of Saint Maximilian on the mirror. “Is this you?” he asked.

From that moment on, we were caught up in the grasp of Divine Mercy. As you know, Pornchai became a devout Catholic and was received into the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2010. Knowing the importance of this conversion for him, I was compelled to set aside all the bitterness of false witness and wrongful imprisonment that I carried like a crushing cross in my own Calvary. Confronting the brokeness of Pornchai meant also confronting my own in the light of Divine Mercy, and it salvaged my life as a priest.

Pornchai Moontri was featured, as you know, in a profoundly wonderful book, Loved, Lost, Found: 17 Divine Mercy Conversions, by Marian Helper Editor Felix Carroll. Father Seraphim Michalenko brought the book to Thailand where he presented a retreat to Divine Mercy Thailand. He read them the chapter about Pornchai, and a future, long since thought to be hopeless, was born for him.

We were also invited to take part in a series of 33-Day retreats in Father Michael Gaitley’s “Hearts Afire” program beginning with “33 Days to Morning Glory.” As a result, dozens of other prisoners followed us on this path and many were converted. I will link to the most moving of their stories at the end of this post.

And Divine Mercy has not let up — not even for a moment. I just learned that in 1994, the year I was sent to prison, Relevant Radio host, Drew Mariani, produced a film along with the Marians entitled, “Time for Mercy.” Late last month, some 26 years later, Drew Mariani interviewed me in prison. The interview is available at our “Special Events” page.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please continue to celebrate Divine Mercy this year through these additional posts with inspiring true accounts of how Divine Mercy has impacted our lives:

Coming Home to the Catholic Faith I Left Behind by Michael Ciresi

I Come to the Catholic Church for Healing and Hope by Pornchai Moontri

Behold Your Son! Behold Your Mother! by Fr Gordon MacRae

St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Man in the Mirror

For someone on the outside looking in, it must seem an odd place to begin. Virtually every prison cell has one: a small stainless steel sink with a matching toilet welded to its side. Bolted to the cinderblock wall just above it is a small stainless steel mirror, dinged, dented, and scraped so badly that the image it reflects is unrecognizable.

I begin each day at the break of dawn in prison by shaving in front of that mirror. This morning ritual has repeated 5,412 times. [At this writing, it 10,530 times.] I seldom cut myself shaving — a minor miracle as I can see very little of me in that mirror. I often think of St. Paul’s cryptic image in his first letter to the Church in Corinth (13:12): “For now I see dimly, as in a mirror, but then I shall see face to face.” It is a hopeful image.

I sometimes find that my mind calculates dates and their meanings on a sort of autopilot. There came a day when I stood at the mirror to shave and realized that on this day it was Dec. 23, 2006. I have been a priest in prison for the exact amount of time that I was a priest “on the streets” as prisoners like to describe their lives before prison.

From that day until now, I wonder which I see more of in that flawed mirror. Do I see the man who is a priest of 27 years? Or do I see only Prisoner 67546, the identity given to me inside these stone walls?

A strange thing happened on the day after I first reflected — as best I could in that mirror — on who I see. It was Christmas Eve, December 24, 2006, the day that the equation changed. It was the day that I was a priest in prison longer than anywhere else. That night at prison mail call, I had a few Christmas cards. One of them was from Father James McCurry, a Conventual Franciscan priest who once visited me in prison.

Inside Father McCurry’s Christmas card was a prayer card that is now one of my enduring treasures. It is taped to the stone wall just above the shaving mirror of my cell and has been there ever since the day I received it. The holy card has an image of St. Maximilian Kolbe who offered himself for execution in place of another prisoner in Auschwitz in 1941. The card depicts Father Kolbe in his Conventual Franciscan habit. He has one sleeve in the striped jacket of his prison uniform with the number 16670 emblazoned across it. There is a scarlet “P” above the number indicating his Polish nationality. He was also a priest and a falsely accused prisoner. Does either designation extinguish the other? Father Kolbe is at once both, though only one identity was chosen by him.

The image is a haunting image for it captures fully that struggle I have so keenly felt. Father Maximilian appeared in my cell just a day after I asked the question of myself. Who am I? I thought at the time, that it was a rhetorical question, but it was a prayer. As such, it begged a reply — and got one.

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