Sir, – It is good to know, 25 years on, that the church of San Carlos Boromeo, Madrid, continues its remarkable work among the marginalised of all faiths and none in that city (“Rebel priests bring kingdom of heaven down to earth”, World News, July 20th).
In 1987, as a freelance journalist, I spent a day with worker priest Fr Enrique de Castro, whose fight at the time was against the scourge of drugs. In particular, he was the driving force in a campaign through the national media to expose alleged police connivance in drug-dealing. Seven young men, all former heroin addicts, shared his modest house in El Pozo del Tío Raimondo, one of the poorest suburbs of Madrid.
His position was the same then as now. “As a priest,” he told me, “it makes no difference to me what religion people adhere to, or whether they believe or not. My aim, my only ambition, is to give these people some hope in a world where so much is against them. For me, the example of Christ’s life and the message of the gospel are the bases of this action.”
As a person of no belief, it always strikes me as strange that the very priests who live out the teaching of the founder of the Christian faith are invariably labelled “rebel” and “maverick”, when surely the very opposite is the case. Or am I missing something? – Yours, etc,
GERALDINE
MITCHELL DEVLIN,
North Killadoon,
Louisburgh, Co Mayo.