Divine Mercy for Doubting Thomas and Other Spiritually Wounded

The Gospel on Divine Mercy Sunday is St John’s account of the spiritually wounded Thomas who would not know peace until surrendering his wounds to the Risen Christ.

April 23, 2025 by Fr Gordon MacRae

There is a scene in the great World War II prisoner of war film, Stalag 17, in which an American Air Force officer (played by actor William Holden) negotiates with the German Commandant over the treatment of a fellow prisoner. I was dragged into a similar role here several years ago when I protested an injustice aimed at a friend.

For a long time I had managed to avoid efforts to recruit me for an Inmate Communications Committee (ICC), a group of eight chosen from 1,500 prisoners here. The ICC advocated for better prison conditions and due process. After protesting over another prisoner, I no longer had a valid excuse, so I reluctantly accepted.

From the start, I was saddled with doing all the writing, which included detailed minutes of every meeting for distribution to prison officials, a monthly summary of progress, and a quarterly newsletter.

The job — which payed nothing — was in addition to my Law Library job which payed next to nothing. It also meant writing endless memos, proposals, clarifications, and requests that I fielded each week. We succeeded in only about ten percent of the concessions we set out to obtain, and that is more or less on par with William Holden’s success rate in Stalag 17.

About the only high point is that I was also required to be present at a Jobs and Education Fair in the prison gymnasium twice a year. It was an effort to get the other 1,500 prisoners here into jobs, educational classes and programs, and typically about 500 showed up. Among the dozens of display tables set up, the Law Library and ICC were side by side, so I manned both.

The Veterans Affairs table was set up next to the ICC table. It was a nice display with information on veteran groups here, an annual POW/MIA Remembrance, and other programs. The table was staffed by my friend, John, whom I did not get to see as often as I would like. John was a Navy veteran in his mid to later thirties. He lost his leg during active duty in the Middle East before coming to prison. John told me that when he arrived here, his prosthetic leg was taken from him because of an infection at the amputation site with the result of consigning him to a wheelchair. John was very anxious to get the prosthetic leg back and get back on his feet again, but because of the fear of infection, the prison medical officials were withholding it. It was John, by the way, who told me of the release of my friend Martin, the U.S. Marine veteran I wrote about in “A U.S. Marine Who Showed Me What to Give Up for Lent.”

I told John that I would do some research to see if there was a precedent here that John might use to restore his prosthetic leg. Then, without thinking, I thanked him for “stepping up” to take charge of the Veteran’s table. I quickly apologized for my faux pas, but John had a good laugh.

Then he told me that he spent half his day thanking people for all sorts of small things: an assist out of the chair, a push up a steep ramp, picking up a dropped item. He said that my thanks was the first time in a long time anyone had thanked him for his service to others. That small, awkward gesture had a profound effect on John. As I left, he was beaming. I made a decision that I would find a way to help restore what he lost and get him out of that dreaded wheelchair.

I can sometimes become so aware of the spiritual warfare that engulfs me here that it diminishes my awareness of the wounds of others. We are all, in one way or another, wounded by life physically, emotionally, spiritually, and it dulls our senses.

It drives us onto self-centered islands of emotional distance and spiritual isolation. The wounds we carry foster pessimism and doubt, erode faith, and turn the joy of living into a crucible of mere existence. Peace evades wounded warriors, even in spiritual warfare.

Doubting Thomas

This is the great plague of our age. I receive lots of mail from readers asking me to pray for a husband or wife, a son or daughter, who has lost their faith in response to the wounds of life and the sheer weight of living. In a war with one’s self, faith is often the first to go and the last to come back. If this describes you or someone in your life, then pay special attention to the Apostle Thomas in the Gospel from Saint John on Divine Mercy Sunday.

There are some remarkable elements in Saint John’s account of the death of Jesus and all that came after the Cross. The first witness to the “Seventh Sign,” the Resurrection of Jesus, was a woman whose own demons Jesus had once cast out. I wrote of her and the evidence for her first-hand witness in “Mary Magdalene: Faith, Courage, and an Empty Tomb.” I would like to reproduce a scene from that post that never took place, but it is one that I have long imagined.

“Mary came to the disciples, Peter and the others, hidden by fear behind locked doors, and said, ‘I have good news and not-so-good news.’ Peter asked, ‘What’s the good news?’ Mary replied, ‘The Lord has risen and I have seen him.’ Peter then asked, ‘What’s the not-so-good news?’ Mary said, ‘He’s on his way here, and He wants a word with you about last Friday.”

The focus is so intensely on Jesus in the Resurrection accounts that it is easy to forget the wounds of everyone else in this story. They are all living with the deeply felt trauma of loss, and not only loss, but with an overwhelming sense of utter discouragement. They are devastated and stripped of hope.

John, the Beloved Disciple, stood with the mother of Jesus at the foot of the Cross and watched Him die a most gruesome death at the hands of the Roman Empire, but at the behest of his own people, the Chief Priests who answered Pilate, “We have no king but Caesar.”

Mary Magdalene stood there as well, and watched. The others fled. Peter, their leader, denied three times that he even knew Jesus. All that had been promised and hoped for had been misunderstood, and now gone forever. The Chief Priests — emboldened when Pilate caved to their “We Have No King but Caesar” — sought only to round up the rest.

It was in this state of fear that Mary Magdalene showed up in the Upper Room where the Apostles were in hiding for fear of the mobs. She had news that defied belief. And when Jesus first appeared to them behind that locked door, His demeanor was the opposite of what I imagined above to be a human response to their abandonment of Him. “Peace be with you,” He said. It is not a reference to a state of peace between disputing parties or someone subject to Earthly powers. The word the Gospel used in Greek – Eiréné – has more to do with spiritual welfare than spiritual warfare.

It refers to a state of mind, heart and soul, the equivalent of the Hebrew “Shalom”, and its usage means harmony with God within one’s self. It is the same sense that the Prophet Isaiah used in his Messianic expectation of the Prince of Peace:

“For us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder and his name will be called ‘Wonder Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’”

— Isaiah 9:6

It is what Saint Paul refers to in his letter to the Colossians, “Let the peace of Christ reign in your hearts” (Col. 3:15). Once you have it, it is far more contagious than any pandemic. This peace is the foundation and gift of Divine Mercy.

But Thomas missed the whole thing. When he arrived and found them stunned and exuberant, he retreated into his own deep wounds. Thomas did not stay to see Jesus crucified. Like the others, he could not bear it. He and they fled when Jesus appeared before Pilate mocked, beaten, broken, as the accusing mob grew beyond control to threaten even Pilate himself, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” But Thomas saw enough to know that it was over, that all was lost, and all hope had gone out of the world. So when faced with the great risk of trusting and hoping again, he said,

“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger into the nail marks, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

— John 20:25

Trusting Divine Mercy

For this, the Apostle is forever called, “Doubting Thomas,” but I see something more painful than his doubt. I see him also as hurting, defeated, robbed of hope. He had to touch the wounds of the Risen Christ because the wounds of the Crucified Christ had already touched him, had broken his heart, and devastated his faith, and destroyed all hope. As so many of you know only all too well, coming to trust again after such hurt is a very risky business.

I find it fascinating that the story of Thomas and his struggle with trust and hope after the events of Holy Week is the Gospel for Divine Mercy Sunday. When Jesus presented Himself to Thomas, and invited him to probe the wounds in his living hands and side, Thomas did not oblige. Instead, he surrendered his own wounds, and responded in a leap of faith, “My Lord and my God.” Pope Benedict XVI wrote of this in his magisterial book, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week:

“In His two appearances to the Apostles gathered in the Upper Room, Jesus repeats several times the greeting, ‘Peace be with you’… It becomes the gift of peace that Jesus alone can give because it is the fruit of his radical victory over evil… For this reason Saint John Paul II chose to call this Sunday after Easter ‘Divine Mercy,’ with a very specific image: that of Jesus’ pierced side from which blood and water flowed.”

This image, revealed to Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska as the image of Divine Mercy, is that of the same wounds transfigured:

“I saw the Lord Jesus dying on the Cross amidst great suffering, and out of the Heart of Jesus came the two rays as are in the image.”

— Diary of Saint Faustina, 414

“The two rays denote blood and water. The pale ray stands for the Water which makes souls righteous. The red ray stands for the Blood which is the life of souls… Happy is the one who will dwell in their shelter…”

— Diary of Saint Faustina, 299

I recently wrote a post entitled “Thailand’s Once-Lost Son Was Flag Bearer for the Asian Apostolic Congress.” Most of our readers know the story of what led to Pornchai Maximilian Moontri’s Divine Mercy conversion. Starting at the age of two in rural Thailand, he knew only abandonment by the very people who should have taught him trust. Forced to forage in the streets for food, he was hospitalized for malnutrition. Then at age eleven he was taken from Thailand and forced into a life marked by violence, exploitation and abuse. At age 18, after several years of adolescent homelessness, he killed a man after being pinned to the ground in a struggle. Pornchai was sent to prison for life. While there, his mother, his only contact in the free world was murdered by the man who exploited him. After many years of solitary confinement, Pornchai was moved to another prison and spent the next 15 years as my roommate.

How does anyone emerge from such wounds? How does anyone ever trust again when all prior trust was broken? On Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010, Pornchai took on a new name, “Maximilian,” after Saint Maximilian Kolbe who walked this path with him and led him to Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

In the course of this remarkable journey, Pornchai’s wounds never healed. They are with him for life, but they have been transformed. He is a powerful figure today in the realm of Divine Mercy because he has placed his wounds in the service of the Risen Lord. Back in October of 2024, Pornchai was invited to carry the flag of the Kingdom of Thailand in procession at the Fifth Asian Apostolic Congress on Divine Mercy held in the Philippines. In the scene atop this section, Pornchai Max proudly carries the flag of Thailand before a crowd of 5,000 pilgrims in honor of Divine Mercy.

If a picture speaks a thousand words, this one below speaks volumes. This is the Face of Divine Mercy.

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Father MacRae and Pornchai Moontri: An Interview on the Drew Mariani Show on Relevant Radio (15 minutes)

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And to honor our late Holy Father: “Pope Francis Had a Challenge for the Prodigal Son’s Older Brother.”

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.”

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

For Pornchai Moontri, A Miracle Unfolds in Thailand

Divine Providence: Pornchai Moontri was brought to northern Thailand for his Thai ID, and then to Nong Bua Lamphu and the family he was taken from 36 years ago.

I hope you have read Pornchai’s first guest post from Thailand, “Free at Last Thanks to God and You!” This unbelievable story of grace and Divine Mercy now seems to be just beginning long after I thought it was coming to an end. But before I delve into that, I need to comment on the photo atop this post.

To formally welcome Pornchai to Bangkok, Father John Le, SVD and friends treated him to a cruise on the Chao Phraya River, a shipping lane that runs through the center of Bangkok and is the port city’s lifeline. There is a wonderful, painful, seemingly miraculous story that was set in motion just after this photo was taken at the end of February, 2021.

Pornchai’s return to Thailand after a 36-year absence was coordinated by Yela Smit, a Co-Founder of the Catholic apostolate, Divine Mercy Thailand. Yela had worked out a plan with me for Pornchai’s housing after his release from the required hotel quarantine. However, just before being released from his gruesome 5-month ICE detention to travel to Thailand, our longer term housing plan fell apart due to illness.

As soon as that happened, Father John Le offered sanctuary to Pornchai for a time of adjustment and discernment. Father John is a Vietnamese priest and a member of the Missionary Society of the Divine Word. His principal ministry in Thailand is the resettlement of refugees. Though this change in plans seemed to be by “accident,” Pornchai could not be in better hands.

On March 29, 1973, after the U.S. signed the Paris Peace Treaty with North and South Vietnam, the last U.S. troops left Vietnam. The Paris Accord did little to end the bloodshed after the departure of American forces, however. The continued presence of North Vietnamese soldiers in South Vietnam dissolved the cease-fire agreement. Without the presence of U.S. troops, thousands of refugees fled South Vietnam and a looming communist slaughter. Many fled aimlessly in small, crowded boats. John Le, at age 15, was among the famous “Boat People” who shook the conscience of the Western World.

Father Le knows painfully well what it means to be a displaced person. I was deeply grateful when Yela told me that he and his religious community stepped up to offer sanctuary to Pornchai. I had the task of telling Pornchai about this by telephone while he was still trapped in ICE detention. I remember telling him that often such a sudden change in plans is divinely inspired and becomes a source of grace.

I had no idea then just how prophetic those words would become. The story that follows is just the latest thread in the tapestry of extraordinary graces in the epic Divine Mercy story of Pornchai Moontri.

A Return to the Painful Past

In a telephone conversation with me just before Pornchai’s flight to Thailand, Father Le said that Pornchai must obtain his official Thai citizen ID which he would have received at age 16 had he been in Thailand at that time. He said he would drive Pornchai eight hours north of Bangkok to the City of Khon Kaen where his birth records are located. From there, Father Le said, they would go further north to the Province of Nong Bua Lamphu.

Father John said that his Order sponsors a home and clinic there for Thai children suffering from HIV. I was shocked by this, not by the nature of this much needed apostolate, but by the location. It was from that very place that Pornchai was taken at the age of 11 and brought to the United States against his will 36 years ago. This is an incredibly painful memory for Pornchai, and among the most traumatic times of his life. Most readers know by now the full story of all that happened after, but if you have missed it, please don’t. The story is told at “Human Trafficking: Thailand to America and a Cold Case in Guam.”

Having been abandoned by his parents at age two, Pornchai was hospitalized with malnutrition. His mother had left Pornchai and his brother to go to Bangkok to find work. She was a mere teenager herself at the time. Bangkok is nine hours away by car, and she did not drive. No one knows how she got there. But once there, Pornchai’s mother, Wannee, fell under the control of a most evil man, Richard Bailey, an American and former helicopter pilot in Vietnam. Bailey took Wannee to the United States in 1978.

They settled in Bailey’s home town of Bangor, Maine. Bailey knew that Wannee had two small sons living with her family in Thailand, but he had no interest in them until they were ages 11 and 13. He then sent Wannee to Thailand to retrieve them. If you have read the above article, then you already know all that happened next. Pornchai was victimized in unspeakable ways, and forced into homelessness at age 13. Living on the streets with no parental guidance or assistance, he became embroiled in a drunken struggle at age 18, and went to prison.

While awaiting trial, Pornchai’s mother came to visit him. Sent by Richard Bailey she was instructed to warn Pornchai of what would happen to her if Pornchai told the court the truth. This compelled Pornchai into silence and he refused to offer a defense. After the trial, Bailey relocated with Wannee to the U.S. territorial Island of Guam. Six years later, in 1998 Wannee gained the courage to leave Bailey and confront him with what he had inflicted on her and on Pornchai and his brother. She filed for divorce. The Guam court ordered Bailey to pay her a settlement sum of $1,000 per month and half the sale of their jointly-owned home in Guam. Wannee then returned to her family in Thailand to attempt to rebuild her life.

Pornchai was in his sixth year in prison in Maine at that time. Back in Thailand, Wannee had begun to have a home built on a small parcel of land she owned in Nong Bua Lamphu. She was counting on funds ordered by the Guam court to complete the home that she intended to live in with Pornchai upon his release from prison. In 2000, when it became clear that Bailey simply ignored the court restitution orders, Wannee returned to Guam to seek their enforcement.

But before her return, she visited Pornchai in prison. She told him that she was living back in Thailand building a home for them both, and she apologized for the years of disbelieving him when he told her the truth. She said she was on her way back to Guam to seek the funds needed to complete the home. Pornchai never saw his mother again. The 2000 Guam autopsy report concluded that she had been beaten to death. Her death remains a “cold case” homicide despite new evidence that has not been investigated by Guam authorities who to date remain silent.

The Odyssey Runs Full Circle

After applying for Pornchai’s official Thai ID in the City of Khon Kaen, Father John Le drove him another 90 minutes to Nong Bua Lamphu. The home Pornchai lived in as a small child had been destroyed and another rebuilt on the same site. Over his absence of 36 years, the village of small farms and rice paddies had grown into a more modern town. Nothing was recognizable to Pornchai, but just being there held him spellbound.

Having lost his mother to Bangkok and Richard Bailey at age two, Pornchai had also lost all memory of her. Growing up in Nong Bua Lamphu, he came to believe that his Aunt MaeSin was his mother. MaeSin was 36 years old when Pornchai was removed from her home. She is 72 today. Pornchai also has a cousin there who was 15 when he last saw her. She is 52 today. Before leaving Nontha Buri with Father John, Pornchai and he located his cousin and called to tell her he is back in Thailand and will be coming to visit. He had no idea what to expect and neither did his cousin or aunt. His family there did not know about all that had happened to Pornchai beyond the mere fact that he had been in prison in America.

Father John took a photograph of their reunion, captured below. A lifetime of loss and sorrow for both was suddenly transformed into a moment of great joy. I cannot begin to describe the cascade of emotions Pornchai experienced in this photo. I have been talking with him by phone at the end of each day, and walked with him through these overwhelming events.

But our story gets even more overwhelming. Pornchai learned that his Mother’s remains had been returned to Thailand and were interred in a nearby Buddhist Temple cemetery. Pornchai and Father John went there and Pornchai offered prayers at his Mother’s tomb and that of his grandmother, whom he remembers with great fondness and deep respect. Pornchai has allowed us to share this sacred moment.

I called Pornchai at 10:00 PM Bangkok time at the end of his first day in MaeSin’s company. She had suggested to Pornchai that he sleep in the house next door which was empty. MaeSin does not speak English and Pornchai last spoke Thai at age eleven 36 years ago. Love, even after decades, speaks its own language, but some details became lost in translation. When I called Pornchai, he was sitting in the empty house that his mother was having built. It had sat empty for 21 years since her death in Guam.

When Wannee left Thailand to visit Pornchai in prison in 2000 and return to Guam to confront Richard Bailey about the court’s terms, she had no idea that she was going to her death. The house she was building in Nong Bua Lamphu still contained all her personal belongings. When I called Pornchai late that night, he was sitting on the edge of his bed, overcome with emotion while surrounded by his Mother’s meager Earthly possessions. Her clothes were still in the closet and dresser. A photo of her with Priwan, Pornchai’s older brother, was on the nightstand. Pornchai had not yet been born.

Pornchai sobbed as he sat amid the wreckage of a life — his own as well as his Mother’s. It took me a moment to connect the dots and realize where Pornchai was. The emotional impact of it struck me like a thunderbolt. Pornchai is still processing all this. So am I. I told him that Divine Providence brought him to that house to honor his mother. And so he must.

I think a lot about Wannee. She had no one to protect her in life but there is much we can do for her in death. I believe that she is precious in the hands of God whose Providence has led us all to this moment. I remain deeply troubled by the unfinished business on the Island of Guam where authorities have been unresponsive to new evidence and our inquiries. These latest events are for me a wake-up call reminding me that the odyssey of Pornchai Moontri, though having run full circle, remains incomplete.

Father John Le left Pornchai in Nong Bua Lamphu for a week while he attended a meeting with his Order. On Sunday, March 7, Father Ben, a member of the order, was sent to pick up Pornchai at MaeSin’s home and take him to a nearby Catholic Mass, his first entirely in Thai. On March 12, Father John returned to accompany Pornchai on the nine-hour drive back to the Divine Word Mission in Nontha Buri.

As we wander among these dangling threads behind the Great Tapestry of God, please pray for Pornchai that he will be strengthened in his faith as he confronts the brokenness of his past.

As for me, I have been privileged to walk with Pornchai through the wreckage left behind by someone else. At this juncture, I can only borrow from the great Robert Frost in Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. I cannot yet retreat from this.

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“I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: We would be in dire straits right now without Father John Le and the Society of the Divine Word who now comprise our boots on the ground in Thailand. I am deeply moved by their amazing support of my friend at this critical time. If you wish to help, please see our “Special Events” page.

And please share this post, and these related posts referenced herein:

Free at Last Thanks to God and You!

Human Trafficking: Thailand to America and a Cold Case in Guam

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