It Is the Duty of a Priest to Never Lose Sight of Heaven

Marking 40 years of priesthood, 28 of them unjustly in prison, this priest guides readers to a higher truth. For those suffering in life, eternal life matters more.

“When suffering is far away, we feel that we are ready for everything. Now that we have occasion to suffer, we must take advantage of it to save souls.”

— Fr. Maximilian Kolbe writing from Auschwitz, 1941

I am indebted to my friend, Father Stuart MacDonald, JCL, for his remarkable and timely guest post, “Bishops, Priests, and Weapons of Mass Destruction.” In it, he concluded that some of our bishops have acted in regard to their priests by caving into the cancel culture mob even before it was called that. “The mob can be a frightening place when we have lost sight of heaven,” he boldly wrote. I was struck by this important insight which lends itself to my title for this post: It is the duty of a priest to never lose sight of heaven.

In the weeks before I mark forty years of priesthood, I have heard from no less than three good priests who have been summarily removed from ministry without a defense. Like many others, they are banished into exile following 30-year-old claims for which there exists no credible evidence beyond the accusations themselves and demands for money.

This sad reality, imposed by our bishops in a panicked response to the Catholic abuse crisis, has been the backdrop of nearly half of my life as a priest. As Father Stuart mentioned in his post, I wrote of this a decade ago in regard to the demise of the celebrated public ministry of Father John Corapi at EWTN. Given the resurgence of priests falsely accused, I decided to update and republish that post on social media. It is “Goodbye, Good Priest! Fr. John Corapi’s Kafkaesque Catch-22.”

The point of it was not Father Corapi himself, but rather the matters of due process and fundamental justice and fairness that have suffered in regard to the treatment of accused priests. In republishing it, I was struck by how little has changed in this regard since I first wrote of Father Corapi a decade earlier.

My article presents no new information on the priesthood of Father Corapi, but lest our spiritual leaders think that interest in this story among Catholics has diminished, within 24 hours of publishing, that post was visited by over 6,500 readers and shared on social media 3,700 times. (Note: We now give it a permanent home in the “Catholic Priesthood” Category at the BTSW Library.)

The only priests who land in the news these days are those accused of sexual or financial wrongdoing and those who make their disobedience to Church authority in matters of faith and morals a media event. In regard to the latter, several priests and bishops in Germany have openly defied Pope Francis and his decision to bar priests from blessing same-sex unions.

Blessing the individuals involved would not be an issue, but, as Pope Francis put it, “The Church cannot bless sin.” The open defiance of this among some German priests brought them 15 minutes of fame in our cancel culture climate in recent weeks, but it does nothing to bring us any closer to heaven.

Appearing on The World Over with Raymond Arroyo recently, Catholic theologian and author, George Weigel, addressed the German situation plainly:

“These bishops think that they know more about marriage than Jesus, that they know more about worthiness for the Eucharist than Saint Paul. This is apostasy, and it is time to call it what it really is.”

— George Weigel

The Setting for My Priesthood

In every age, people tend to see the struggles of their current time as the worst of times. My priesthood ordination took place on June 5, 1982. It was the only ordination in the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire that year. President Ronald Reagan was in the second year of his first term in office. The U.S. economy was suffering its most severe decline since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Unemployment was at its highest level in decades and the housing industry was on the verge of collapse.

Just over a year earlier, on May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot four times at close range as he entered Saint Peter’s Square to mark the 64th anniversary of the first appearance of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal. John Paul was severely wounded and so was the spirit of the global Catholic Church. He recovered, though a lesser man might not have.

One year later, three weeks before my ordination, Pope John Paul made a thanksgiving visit to Fatima on May 12, 1982. It was the day before the anniversary of both the Visions of Fatima and the attempt on his life. As the Pope walked toward the altar of the Fatima shrine, a man in clerical garb lunged at him with a bayonet, coming within inches of killing John Paul before being subdued by security guards.

The assailant was Juan Fernandez y Krohn, then age 32, a priest ordained by the suspended traditionalist French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Fernandez was subsequently expelled from Lefebvre's movement. As he lunged at the Pope with his bayonet, he shouted in denouncement of the Second Vatican Council while accusing Pope John Paul of collaborating with the dark forces behind the spread of Communism.

That latter accusation was highly ironic. Over the next decade, Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II collaborated to become the two major forces behind the collapse of the Soviet Union and European Communism that had held the Western World in the grip of Cold War since the end of World War II.

In 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down by a crowd of citizens from both East and West as soldiers watched in silence. On Christmas Day, 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announced his resignation in a television address. The next day, the Soviet parliament passed its final resolution ratifying the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Within a week, all residual functions of the Soviet Communist state ceased. The USSR was no more, thanks to the strength and fidelity of a Pope and a President.

The footprints of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul on modern human history are immense. This and the chaos of the world at that time formed the backdrop against which I became a priest in 1982. I wrote of this in “Priesthood: The Signs of the Times and the Sins of the Times.”

The sins of the times were many. On the world stage, Pope John Paul courageously confronted the Marxist “cancel culture” movement of his time. His bold witness to the world and his fidelity are highlighted in a new and important book by George Weigel entitled Not Forgotten.

In contrast, much of the current Catholic ecclesial leadership seems bogged down in demonstrations of tolerance for dissent and the rise of socialism and Marxist ideology that again springs up anew as “cancel culture.” Some bishops cannot even decide whether open promotion of abortion should bar its adherents who are nominally Catholic from presenting themselves for the Eucharist. 

Ironically, recent polls have suggested that 66-percent of American Catholics are uncertain whether they still even believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It is that exact same percentage who also believe that President Biden should be admitted to the Eucharist without question despite his open promotion of abortion as a civil right. Our Catholic crisis is not just one of fidelity. It is a crisis of identity. But as has been famously asked by another well-known priest, “Who am I to judge?”

Witnessed in a Prison Journal

Now here I stand, 39 years into my priesthood on the peripheries with 27 of those years in wrongful imprisonment for abuse claims that never took place. I could have left prison 26 years ago had the truth meant nothing to me. I have been reading the far better known story of another falsely accused priest in the Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell published by Ignatius Press.

I find in it much solace and peace. I am strengthened in my priesthood by the great effort of Cardinal Pell to maintain his identity as a priest even in prison. I know from long experience - too long - that there is nothing in prison, absolutely nothing that sustains an identity of priesthood. It is so easy and a constant temptation to simply give up. For page after page in the Journal, I find myself thinking, “I felt that very same way,” or “I did these very same things.” Our prisons were similar, although from Cardinal Pell descriptions, Australia’s prisons seem a bit more humane.

Cardinal Pell was in prison for 400 days before his unjust convictions were recognized as such in a unanimous exoneration by Australia’s High Court. On my 39th anniversary of ordination on June 5th this year, I mark 9,750 days in wrongful imprisonment. I do not point this out to contrast my experience with that of Cardinal Pell. His ordeal, like mine, was defined by his first failed appeals after which he had every reason to believe that prison could thus define the rest of his life.

I have no known recourse because, unlike Australia, the United States courts have given greater weight to states’ rights to finality in criminal cases than to innocent defendants’ rights to a case review. When I had new witnesses and evidence, the court not only declined to hear it, but declined to allow any further appeals. We even appealed that, but to no avail.

But a distinction between justice for Cardinal Pell and for me is not the point I want to make. I felt the lacerations to his good name in every step of his Way of the Cross as news media in Australia and globally exploited the charges against him. What a trophy his wrongful conviction was for those who hate the Church!

I felt the scourging he endured as multiple false claimants tried to use his cross for financial gain. I felt his condemnation in the halls of the high priests as cowardly men of the Church denounced him, at worst, or at best stood speechless in the shadows of silence, rarely mentioning his name, and even then only in whispers.

Reading Volume One of Cardinal Pell’s Prison Journal has been both consoling and distressing. Consoling in that when all else was stripped away, truth and priesthood, even more than freedom, were still at the heart of this good priest’s identity. The measure of a man is not when all is going well, but when all that is dear and familiar has been stripped away. Cardinal Pell held up well. I like to think I have, too.

I have reserved a copy of Volume Two of the Prison Journal. I am told by those who know that in a few of its pages, Cardinal Pell also wrote about me. That struck me as highly ironic in that I wrote several times about his plight, the last being “From Down Under, the Exoneration of George Cardinal Pell.”

And by “From Down Under,” I do not just mean Australia!

The Last Years of My Priesthood

I expect that I will die in prison. This is not a statement out of despair. No one has taken my faith in Divine Providence and Divine Mercy. There came a time in my imprisonment when I recognized a pattern of grace that began with the insinuation of Saint Maximilian Kolbe into my life as both a priest and a prisoner. This grace has been profound, and staggering in its visibility and power. Our readers — all but the most spiritually blind — have seen it.

After a lifetime of devoting himself as a priest in Consecration to Jesus through Mary, Maximilian coped with his suffering as grace rather than torment. This story culminated, as you know, in his spontaneous decision to surrender his life so that another could live. This act of sacrifice has long been heralded as an exemplar of the words of Jesus, “No greater love has a man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

There came a point in my imprisonment when it was clear that all I tried to do to bring about justice was in vain. So I asked for Divine Mercy and the ability to find grace in this story. A life without grace is far worse than a life without justice. It was at that very point at which my friend, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri, arrived upon my road as a priest. He had been mercilessly beaten down in life, and robbed of all trust and hope.

I could have been the priest who saw him on that road and passed him by like the priest in the Parable of the Samaritan. But I stopped, and when I learned the whole truth of his life, I set my own hope for justice aside. It became clear to me that this was God’s action in my life and a task that He has given only to me. It became clear that Pornchai has a special connection to Christ through the Immaculate Heart of Mary and I was to be his Saint Joseph.

I wrote a post about this healing mission which I contrasted with the Book of Tobit and the mission of Saint Raphael the Archangel to be God’s instrument of healing. I wrote of this in one of my own favorite posts at Beyond These Stone Walls in “Archangel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri.”

You should not miss that post, and if you do read it, you would do well to ponder for awhile the mysteries of grace on your own life’s path. It was well after writing and posting it that I learned something that stunned me into a better awareness of the irony of grace.

Over the course of time, the Church has devised a Lectionary that reveals all of Sacred Scripture in the readings for the Church’s liturgy spread over a three-year cycle. I discovered only while writing this post for the occasion of my 39th anniversary of priesthood ordination that the First Reading at Mass on that day — Saturday, June 5, 2021 — is the story of the Archangel Raphael sent by God to restore life and sight to Tobit and bring deliverance and healing to two souls — Tobias and Sarah — whose lives and sufferings converged upon Tobit’s at that point in time.

As I mark thirty nine years as a priest in extraordinary circumstances, the weight of imprisonment does not leave me broken. But the irony of grace leaves me hopeful — even now.

Thank you for being a part of my life as a priest. Thank you for being here with me at this turning of the tide.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: We have a most important message for readers. Please visit our “Special Events” page.

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You may also like these related posts:

From Down Under, the Exoneration of Cardinal George Pell

Priesthood, The Signs of the Times and the Sins of the Times

Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom

Archangel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri

Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom

After 29 years in a U.S. prison, adjusting to the world is an immense challenge. Simultaneously adjusting to another country and culture is a task beyond measure.

A few years ago, I was invited to write a review of the now famous prison film, The Shawshank Redemption. It is the most replayed film in television history. I combined the review into a story about the prison I am in for going on 27 years. My account, published at LinkedIn, is “The Shawshank Redemption and its Real World Revision.” I hope you will read it.

There is a profoundly sad development in the film — which is a must-see, by the way. The elder prison inmate-librarian, a beloved character played by the great actor, James Whitmore, is paroled after serving many decades. The transition from life in prison to life as a free man in some unnamed Maine city is just too jarring. He is an alien in the strangest of worlds, the free one, and he is suddenly alone — isolated — for the first time in forty years. The alienation and isolation are just too much, and he takes his own life.

News of the character “Brooks”’ terrible end reaches the prison and casts a pall over an already darkened existence for the inmates of Shawshank. One of them — the wrongly convicted Andy Dufresne decides that he cannot have such an end. So he begins a plan for escape that will take 20 years to complete. He breaks through a cell wall and crawls through three miles of foul stench in a sewer pipe. Such an end is a sort of metaphor for leaving prison in the real world. You can free a man from decades in prison, but its residual stench can follow him for years to come.

America has a prison problem. This nation imprisons more of its citizens than all 28 countries of the European Union combined. The United States has five-percent of the world’s population but twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners. The only nations that impose more, and longer prison sentences are Third World countries.

Pornchai Moontri lost his freedom at age 18 on March 21, 1992. He was set free — after ICE tacked another five grueling months onto his sentence — on February 8, 2021, just weeks short of 29 years. He is now 47. The most formative and defining years of his adult life have been spent as a prisoner. And if you have followed the published account of his life, then you know that his prison began at age 11 when he was removed from Thailand. You will find that account, also published as a LinkedIn article, in “Human Trafficking: Thailand to America and a Cold Case in Guam.”

Just two weeks ago, I wrote the story of Pornchai’s five month post-prison stay in ICE detention and his return to Thailand. It ended rather abruptly because his final arrival was just hours before that post was published. Pornchai literally went from 29 years in shackles of one sort or another to standing in the lobby alone at the Bangkok Holiday Inn Express for his mandatory 15 days in quarantine required by the Thai government. We were notified at the last minute that we would have to arrange and prepay the hotel expenses. A few good friends and BTSW readers quickly mobilized to make short work of that obstacle.

The scene at the hotel check-in was both poignant and comical. On the day I write this, I was talking with Pornchai about the topic of this post, and he said, “Make sure you write about my first night in the hotel.” “All of it?,” I asked. “Don’t leave anything out,” he said. So here goes:

It was just after midnight on Monday into Tuesday Bangkok time, on February 9th. After a nearly 24-hour flight, and a brief appearance in the Bangkok Airport security area, the two ICE agents escorting Pornchai wished him well and left. Someone then escorted him to a waiting hotel van. Upon arrival, the driver let him out and said, “The check-in counter is just inside.” Pornchai was frozen in place and the driver looked puzzled. After a moment Pornchai said, “You mean ... I just go in by myself?” It had been 29 years since Pornchai entered a building unescorted.

Free in the City of Angels

In Thailand, Bangkok is called “Krung Thep,” meaning, “City of Angels.” It is a city that never sleeps, a city of 9.3 million souls. Imagine this scene. Pornchai was standing at the main entrance of an urban hotel with its dazzling lights, having to will himself to take the first step of freedom. He walked toward the light, through the doors, and into the brightly lit lobby. It was now about 1:00 AM, and even at that hour two smiling clerks awaited him behind a large counter. Pornchai had no luggage. He had nothing but the clothes he had worn during a grueling 24-hour flight.

“Sawasdee, Khun Pornchai,” said the clerk. Pornchai repeated from long dormant memory the traditional Thai greeting. The check-in went smoothly and he was given a keycard. He had no idea what it was for. Then the clerk said, your stay is in Room 3-8. The elevator is over there. Again, he was frozen in place. The clerk asked him a question in Thai and Pornchai answered with some embarrassment, “I’m sorry. I do not fully understand Thai.” The clerk then asked in English, “Is there anything more you need, Khun Pornchai?” He answered as he did the driver out on the street. “You mean ... I go by myself?”

Pornchai made it into the elevator. As the door closed, this was the moment when he first knew he was free. He stood still for a full thirty seconds wondering what to do. He had no living memory of ever being in an elevator in which he is the one to decide where it goes. Both exhilarated and intimidated, he pushed the “3” button and the elevator moved beneath his feet. When he arrived at Room 3-8, the door was locked. He had no idea how to get in. Then he remembered the keycard. “Maybe it’s this thing,” he thought. He put it in a slot upside down and nothing happened. So he tried again, and this time the door clicked open. He was utterly amazed.

Once inside the dark room, Pornchai began to feel along the walls for a light switch, but there wasn’t one. So he opened the door to let in some light. No light switch anywhere. Then he saw a slot near the door. “Maybe it’s this keycard,” he thought. So he inserted it and the lights came on. Then, finally, after 24 hours in flight and two more hours getting to this point, he had to use the toilet. I would usually spare you this, but he wants me to include it. He reached repeatedly behind him for a lever for the nicety of prison etiquette called “a courtesy flush.” It dawned on him that there was no one else anywhere nearby, another first for him.

But that did not solve the problem of flushing the toilet. After washing his hands he meticulously searched the room for anything that looked like it might flush the toilet. He found nothing. “Surely,” he thought, “the keycard doesn’t flush the toilet too!” So he went to get the keycard out of the wall, thus turning off the lights. Searching again in the dark, he could find no place on or near the toilet to plug in the keycard. But he refused to give up. He restored the lights and searched again. Finally, he spotted what looked like a logo on top of the tank. Do toilets have logos? It did not appear to have a button, but he had nothing to lose. So he reached out and touched the logo, and lo and behold, the thing finally flushed. Pornchai debated with himself whether he should tell me this story.

Pornchai took a quick shower, then collapsed in exhaustion on the bed. Both the room and the bed were larger than anyplace he had ever slept before, and the bed was far softer. He recalled his promise to me that he would not sleep in the bathtub. Thus began a fitful, anxious night, his first in freedom and his first in his homeland after an anguish-filled absence of 36 years. He had never before felt so alone.

Samsung to the Rescue

But we have friends in Bangkok, and they have long awaited Pornchai’s arrival. Yela Smit, a Bangkok travel agent, and Father John Le, a member of the Missionary Society of the Divine Word, dropped off some items for Pornchai that we had sent over there ahead of time. We purchased a small backpack and a change of clothes and pair of sandals often worn in Bangkok. We intended that Pornchai would carry this travel bag in flight, but every time we shipped it to him ICE would move him somewhere else just as it arrived. Then they would just ship it back to us. So we had it sent ahead of time to Yela to bring it to him. I also put together a box of items that would give him a sense of the familiar. This included some of his favorite books, a prayer book, the Saint Maximilian Rosary that BTSW reader Kathleen Riney made for him, and some of his treasured correspondence. Yela and Father John dropped these at the hotel as he slept.

They also brought him a new Samsung Galaxy smartphone loaded with an internet package. Yela sent me his number the day before, so by the end of his first full day in Thailand, we were able to speak. One of our Thailand contacts, Viktor Weyand, also connected with him on his first day there and every day since. Pornchai had never before touched, or even seen, a smart phone, but to my amazement it proved less of a challenge to him than the toilet. (Please don’t tell him I said that!)

A call from me was one of his first on the Samsung phone. I thought he might be elated to hear my voice, but he said, “Actually, I have been listening to you all afternoon.” He left me astonished when he said that he found his way into Beyond These Stone Walls and spent the whole day reading posts about himself, about me, and about some of our weird politics. He read the BTSW “About” page and spent two hours listening to the documentary interviews with me there. He was clearly a newborn fan of the world of information technology.

During my call the next day, I walked him through getting into the Gmail, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts that our friends had set up for him over time. He was surprised to learn that he has over 600 Facebook “friends” most of whom are BTSW readers. Then came the real bombshell. I had him go to Bing.com and put his own name into the Search bar. The results were page after page of eye-popping affirmations of the good man he has become.

I asked him to do this search using Bing because I have found that Google, especially recently, seems to suppress some Catholic and other content with a conservative tone. I have never seen either Bing or Google, but before mentioning this to Pornchai I had a friend search his name on both. Clearly, the Bing search was fairer and more inclusive. Try it for yourself. Search "Pornchai Moontri" on both Bing and Google.

Pornchai had never before seen social media sites. Some of the followers of his Facebook page, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri, are men who had been in prison with him in both Maine and New Hampshire and are now free. All of them have struggled, but have been inspired by how Pornchai’s faith has inspired his journey and helped him face obstacles. One young man, John, was in Maine’s notorious “Supermax” solitary confinement prison with Pornchai 20 years ago. It did much damage to them both. John has written to me of how following Pornchai’s story has informed his own survival. Many others have said the same.

A Road with Many a Winding Turn

In the eleventh hour, just a week before Pornchai’s liberation from ICE and his flight to Thailand, the longer term plan we had for Pornchai’s housing diminished due to illness. Immediately, Father John Le, SVD, contacted me with an invitation for Pornchai to live with him and two other priests from his order in the city of Nontha Buri about one hour’s drive from the center of Bangkok.

Father Le’s principal ministry is the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees in Thailand. Father John is no stranger to the world of displaced persons. At age 15, he was one of the Vietnamese “Boat People” rescued at sea after fleeing a communist regime when American forces vacated Vietnam in the early 1970s. He made his way to Thailand and eventually became a Catholic priest. After twenty years of ministry in Papua New Guinea, his Order assigned him to Thailand six years ago.

In a recent phone conversation, Father John told me that he will soon drive Pornchai up to the northern city of Khon Kaen, an eight-hour drive, where Pornchai’s birth records are located. While there, they will obtain his official Thai citizen ID which he would have received at age 16 had he been in Thailand at that time.

From there, Father John said, they will spend a few days at his Order’s residence north of there where they manage a home and clinic for Thai children suffering from HIV. It is in the village of Nong Bua Lamphu.

This left me awestruck and speechless. It was in that very village that Pornchai lived as a young child with his extended family. He has shadowy memories of water buffalo and a rice paddy there. It was also from that very place that Pornchai was taken at age 11 setting in motion a long and traumatic odyssey from which he now returns full circle 36 years later.

For my part, my place in this amazing story is the most important thing I have ever done as a man and as a priest. The challenges ahead are many for me and for Pornchai, but I am left with no lingering doubt that the light of Divine Mercy has been a beacon of hope and trust for us both.

Sawasdee, my friends. Thank you for being here with us at this turning of the tide.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: I am most grateful to Yela Smit, Father John Le, and Viktor Weyand for helping to prepare a path for my friend’s long awaited journey home. On the day this is posted, Father John will pick up Pornchai from his required quarantine and they will drive together to Nontha Buri on the eastern side of the Bay of Bangkok. There, Pornchai will be a guest of Father John Le and two other priests from the Missionary Society of the Divine Word. Father John’s community struggles to meet its needs so I have pledged to assist by providing some modest room and board for Pornchai’s stay there. If you are inclined to assist as well, I explain how on our Special Events page.

You may also like these related posts referenced herein:

The Shawshank Redemption and its Real World Revision

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

Some of our friends nearby, who have helped to bring about Pornchai's transition, gathered for a Christmas prison visit last year. Here are left to right: Pornchai Moontri, Judith Freda of Maine, Samantha McLaughlin of Maine, Claire Dion of Maine, Viktor and Alice Weyand of Traverse City, Michigan, Father Gordon MacRae, and Mike Fazzino of Connecticut.

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Life Goes On Behind and Beyond These Stone Walls

After eleven years in publication, These Stone Walls begins life anew as “Beyond These Stone Walls” in order to lend some volume to a wrongly imprisoned voice

I cannot put into words the gratitude I feel for the voice from behind these stone walls that has been given to me. I will always be grateful to God and to those who set my voice free when TSW began in 2009. A lot has happened in recent months that now calls for a change of direction and a broadening of our scope. For whatever remaining time God allows me to have this voice, These Stone Walls will have a change of name and venue to become “Beyond These Stone Walls.”

This new site will contain all the content of the old, but if you have found your way here then you have already noticed a substantial change in format and appearance. We ask for your patience as this is a work in progress that will require time to rebuild. Each week, we hope to present not only my new post for the week, but also related content from this and other sources. The idea for a “spin off” of sorts began when a reader came upon TSW one day in a Google search for Pope Benedict XVI which brought the reader to one of my posts, and then to others.

This reader is a person of deep faith and a broad background in science and technology, but chooses to remain anonymous. The reader also discovered scattered among the Internet a broad range of articles, commentary, blog posts, and a few published books about me, Pornchai Moontri, and These Stone Walls. A suggestion was made to allow this content to be collected in one place and call it, “Beyond These Stone Walls.”

As most readers know, my friend, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri has been a part of this endeavor since my very first post in 2009. It was he who first came up with the name, “These Stone Walls.” As you know, Pornchai’s prison sentence ended on September 8, 2020. After 14 years as roommates, he was released to return to his native Thailand. You must not miss this story told in “Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri.”

As you might imagine, life was not easy behind These Stone Walls after Pornchai left. Since that day two months ago, I have been at the hub of a rescue mission. We had developed a promising new life for Pornchai in Thailand. That was entirely the work of TSW and its readers. We were well prepared for the day he was taken away, a day I described in a post about one of TSW ’s Patron Saints, “Padre Pio: Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls.”

The rescue mission began because Pornchai’s departure should have been a simple affair that was filled with hope. All his necessary documents had been carefully prepared in advance. He left here with us both expecting that his stay in ICE detention would be brief — a matter of days, two weeks at most. Instead, he was thrust ever deeper into a nightmare of for-profit ICE detention while he was dragged across the country from one overcrowded facility to another. That whole story must be told, and it will be told.

So for much of the last two months since Pornchai was taken away, my prison cell became a center of operation for giving support to my friend and coordinating the efforts of people on three continents to secure his release and repatriation. Like all spiritual warfare, this battle was waged on many fronts. It was at this most difficult time that unwelcome changes began to take place with These Stone Walls. One technical difficulty after another surfaced over the last two months, and I finally decided that the new site currently being considered had to take on a larger role. The content on These Stone Walls was being manipulated.

Imprisoned Voices on a Global Scale

Complicating all of the above was our global confrontation with Covid-19, its latest series of outbreaks, and the near civil war taking place between left and right in America. There are those in our midst who know just what buttons to push and when to push them. The stories you have heard and read about people being silenced — even in the Church — are real, and I was nearly silenced as well.

Through grace, and with the help of advocates and your prayers, I think I have survived the onslaught for now. Pornchai is also surviving, though in horrible conditions, and is offering what he endures for our readers. I had hoped that by the time you read this his ordeal would be over and he would have arrived intactly in Thailand.  But even after 70 days in ICE detention, that is not the case.  I will write a full account of this story when that time comes, and I will count on you to make it known.

The photograph atop this segment demonstrates the enormity of the obstacles we face on a daily basis to maintain a voice from behind these walls and bring it to you. The most basic forms of human communication that we all take for granted must overcome many obstacles here. Even though Pornchai is no longer a prisoner, but merely an ICE detainee, I had to go to extreme lengths to reach out to him. One of our friends, Claire Dion in Maine, had to utilize two phones with separate lines and configure them so that their microphones and speakers were opposite each other. She added our photos for effect. Welcome to our world!

The real founder of These Stone Walls is Saint Maximilian Kolbe. When spiritual fatherhood beckoned him to secure the salvation of another prisoner, it cost him his life. He knew that going in, but self-preservation was overcome by heroic virtue. I do not lay claim to any of that, but I was beckoned by Divine Mercy to set my quest for freedom aside to help secure freedom for another. That did not end when Pornchai left these stone walls. Even in our disposable culture, spiritual fatherhood has no expiration date.

Others of our friends who were here with me behind these walls are now free, and restored to their homelands. They write to me, and read what I write, from Japan, China, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Each of these countries, and also Thailand, have seen recent dramatic increases in visits to These Stone Walls. Divine Mercy is powerful, and prison walls were no match for it.

Beyond These Stone Walls

It has been interesting to hear from some of our friends in Asian countries where Catholicism is a small minority faith. Our friend in Japan wrote that he had no idea what I had been typing during all those years he was here with us. He said he was astonished to look up me and Pornchai from Tokyo and discover These Stone Walls. He spent weeks devouring posts that he knew were written during some of our most trying times. He finds them to be not only meaningful, but powerful. He is in awe of the back story of Pornchai, and finds the account of how we were thrown together, of all we endured, and of Pornchai’s conversion to be life-changing.

I think that what our friends around the world have found so enthralling is that they expected what I write to mirror the deprivation of prison. But it doesn’t. Just like real life, there are many sordid things here to write about, but what a waste that would be. The fact that we believe, and continue to believe even in the face of adversity and loss, is an affirmation of the Gospel. At a time when Americans are at each others’ throats in the most recent election cycle, this little voice from behind these prison walls has grown in magnitude abroad.

About seventy percent of our readers are in the United States. Canada, England, and Australia have always comprised the majority of others. In the last year or so, this has changed. In the weeks before making this transition to Beyond These Stone Walls, people from many other nations have flocked to these pages. Routinely now, India, Nepal, Japan, Thailand, China, Nigeria, and South Africa show up here in large numbers. Meanwhile, much of the European Union has drifted down the ranks of visitors. This mirrors almost exactly the weakness of Catholic practice and presence in historically Catholic countries while it thrives in Asia.

I like to think that the growing presence of readers from Beyond These Stone Walls is not because they relate to my imprisonment, but rather to the power of the Gospel and Divine Mercy to break through it. I hope you will continue to come here as we venture further Beyond These Stone Walls. We will need your help as this new adventure finds a foothold in the vast wasteland called the Internet.

A Necessary Postscript

Father Richard Heilman at the site, RomanCatholicMan.com has published a little book, the United States Grace Force Prayer Book. Claire Dion sent one each to Pornchai and me. It is a potent little book with a collection of the very prayers and devotions that I would have chosen had I composed it. My friend, Father Michael Gaitley, MIC, has a presence in its pages. His Prayer of Consecration to Jesus Through Mary is found there along with the Consecration Prayers of Saint Louis de Montfort and Saint Maximilian Kolbe. I sure hope that doesn’t go to Father Michael’s head, but I doubt that it will.

But none of that is the final point I want to make. If you ever doubt the power of Divine Mercy to invade your life with a not so-always-easy-to-see abundance of grace, then consider this: as I write this first post for Beyond These Stone Walls, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri is living in a cramped room with eighty ICE detainees in a chaotic place with the blazing lights on 24/7.

As he was preparing to leave here on September 8 for what we hoped would be a short stay in ICE detection during this global pandemic, we prepared a box of his books and other personal belongings to ship to Thailand ahead of him. Before sealing the box, he removed his copy of the United States Grace Force Prayer Book. He said he would rather risk losing it than not having it.

I had to pause while typing this because he contacted me through a friend to ask if we could send him another copy. “Did you lose it?” I asked in our phone call while wedged between two books. “No,” he said. “The other guys in the bunks around me all want to borrow mine.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae:  If you have been a subscriber to These Stone Walls, we have done our best to transfer your email address for notification of posts at Beyond These Stone Walls. If by chance we missed you, or if you wish to subscribe anew, please subscribe at the end of the post.

Also from Father G:  If you would like to send a note or card of encouragement to Pornchai, it may help to sustain him through this trial.  The address is:

Pornchai Moontri

A039064244

LaSalle Detention Facility 

P.O. Box 560

Trout, Louisiana 71371

And if you would like to help him as he begins life anew you may do so at:

Pornchai Moontri

c/o Beyond These Stone Walls

P.O. Box 205

Wilmington, MA 01887-0205

We also invite you to like and follow Beyond These Stone Walls Facebook. You would assist us greatly by sharing this post on your social media.

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You may also like these related links from Beyond These Stone Walls: 

Padre Pio: Witness for the Defense of Wounded Souls

Padre Pio and Maximilian Kolbe, the Patron Saints behind These Stone Walls, have an obscure thread of connection that magnifies witness, sacrifice, and fatherhood.

There was an eerie sense about us as Pornchai Maximilian Moontri and I walked around the concrete prison yard at 0500 on September 8, the Feast of the Nativity of Mary. There was not yet any sign of the dawn, nor was there any moon in the sky. If there were stars, we were blinded to them by the blazing prison lights reflected from the high walls that surrounded us. I asked Pornchai to take a long last look at these walls, for he was about to enter the final stretch of his long road to freedom.

Just then, a sliver of bright light emerged above the building where we have lived in a 60-square-foot cell for the last three of our years in prison — 28 for Pornchai and 26 for me. We stood still to watch as the bright half-moon arose above all the walls. I told Pornchai that he will gaze upon the same moon in Thailand that I will see from this very spot. There was a long silence as he considered this, and then it was followed by tears. I had been putting a brave face on things up to this point, but I could no longer contain it.

It is difficult for men to talk and sob at the same time. I do not suggest that women cry more than men. Perhaps men do not cry enough. It is just that there was so much to say, and so I choked back the tears until another time. If you have been reading These Stone Walls for any length of time, then you understand what was transpiring that morning. It was expressed best by Pornchai himself in a recent guest post, “Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind.”

Soon after, we had to end that walk, after fourteen years sharing and building faith, conversion and redemption in a tiny prison cell, Pornchai was taken away and we will never see each other again in this life.

Backing up a little, it was Pornchai who brought up the most urgent and necessary part of our conversation that morning. It goes back to one of the first conversations we ever had about Pornchai’s faith experience. It was back in 2006 just before we were moved into the same cell. He described this in his post above. He walked into my cell, saw an image of St. Maximilian Kolbe on the mirror, and asked, “Is this you?” He described that as one of the most important questions of his life.

Fourteen years later, as we walked in the pre-dawn light of a half moon, he said through tears, “Now I have the answer. You have saved me, but no one is saving you.” We talked a lot about our patron saint, of the mystery of how he came into our lives, and of what his witness means for us. Maximilian went to prison because he was writing the truth. I went to prison on trumped up charges, and have been writing the truth ever since. I told Pornchai that he is a very important and powerful part of that truth. I said that no matter what happens to me now, “you are a living witness to the truth that no past is lived at the expense of the present, that no wounds can prevent a soul in search of God from emerging above prison walls.”

The Wounds of Padre Pio

At this writing, Pornchai is now in a tomb of solitary confinement, with no ability to communicate with the outside world. I can support him only with my prayers, but this should only last a few days. By the time you are reading this, he will have already emerged from that to enter another purgatory: ICE detention awaiting deportation. This is probably the most disorganized, haphazard, inhumane and one-size-fits-all thing that the American government bureaucracy does. But we have a team of advocates working to make this stay as brief as possible. They are in touch with me every day.

The Thai consulate will — hopefully soon — arrange a repatriation flight for Pornchai to return to his native land after a 36-year absence. Under ICE rules, he is allowed to have nothing but the clothes he is wearing. We had the foresight to pack a box of his treasured few possessions — a handmade rosary sent to him by TSW, reader Kathleen Riney, a Saint Maximilian medal, some photographs, and a set of Divine Mercy books by Father Michael Gaitley and others. These include Loved, Lost, Found by Felix Carroll which features a chapter about Pornchai’s life. The box is on its way to Thailand and may arrive ahead of him.

When Pornchai himself arrives in Bangkok, he will have a final 14-day stay in solitary confinement, but it will not be in a cell. The Thai government requires a 14-day quarantine period in a Bangkok hotel. Pornchai will not be allowed to leave his hotel room for the 14 days, but it will be unlike all previous experiences of solitary confinement.

[Editor’s note: You can see the solitary confinement unit that held Pornchai decades ago at wgbh.org/frontline/solitarynation. Pornchai knows many of the solitary confinement prisoners in this documentary about his first prison in Maine. If you haven’t seen this, you can’t begin to know what Pornchai has been through. It’s traumatic just to watch it. It’s the video right at the top of that link.]

One of our friends in Thailand will drop off a Samsung smart phone for Pornchai’s use so he and I can communicate. After 28 years in prison, he has never seen a smart phone. His first assignment is to learn how to answer the phone.

His second assignment will be to learn how to use the phone to read the post that you are reading right now. I want him to see what followed our painful discussion on the morning he left in tears — and left me in tears as well. I want him to ponder the mystery of the other patron saint who insinuated himself behind These Stone Walls with us. I want him to ponder the graces imparted to us by Saint Padre Pio who bore the wounds of Christ for fifty years.

I have been aware of Padre Pio for most of my life. As the young Capuchin studying (aka, misled by) pop psychology in the 1970s, a story I told in “Prison Journal: A Midsummer Night’s Midlife Crisis,” I am ashamed to write that I once denounced Padre Pio’s wounds as psychosomatic. I hope he forgives me for my ignorance back when I knew everything. I knew a lot about Padre Pio back then, but I did not know Padre Pio. Now I do. Pornchai knows him as well. He came to us behind These Stone Walls in a personal and powerful way.

I had already been in prison on false witness for four years back in 1998. I had, for all of those years, been living in a horrible situation with eight men in each prison cell designed for only four. To “honor” Catholics’ reverence for Padre Pio then — six years before he was canonized by Saint John Paul II in 2002 — The New York Times ran an article alleging that Padre Pio was the subject of twelve Vatican investigations in his lifetime. The unjust and inflammatory article alleged that “Padre Pio had sex with female penitents twice a week.”

This was the first inkling I ever had that Padre Pio suffered more than the visible wounds of Christ. He also suffered wounds upon his name, his integrity, his priesthood. Here we were, thirty years to the day since his death, and the “Scandal Sheet of Record” was still repeating an unfounded story for the sole purpose of deflating the faith of Catholics who reverenced him. It resonated with me in a most personal way.

Seven years passed. In April, 2005, a newspaper of integrity, The Wall Street Journal, published a two-part account of false witness, wrongful prosecution and public hysteria entitled, “A Priest’s Story” by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, Dorothy Rabinowitz. The article was read all over the world. As a result of it, Bill Donohue at the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights asked me to submit an article about my own awareness of false witness. My article was published in the November 2005 issue of Catalyst under the title, “Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud.”

I was surprised to see that I shared the cover of that issue of Catalyst with a story about how Padre Pio was similarly defamed throughout his life and even after death. None of it was ever substantiated nor was it supported by evidence in any form. On the contrary, many witnesses had testified in Vatican investigations that the detractors were themselves discredited beyond any doubt. That did not stop The New York Times from slander.

The Echoes of a Special Blessing

Among the readers of the WSJ series on my trial’s perversion of justice was Pierre Matthews, a Belgian with dual American citizenship who at the time was living in Chicago. The articles were his first realization — as they were for many — that the whole truth about the nature of Catholic scandal had not been told by the mainstream media. Pierre wrote to me. Months later, on a return trip from Belgium, he diverted his flight itinerary for a stop in Boston from where he drove up to Concord, NH to visit me in prison.

Later in 2005, Pornchai Moontri — who had spent the previous seven years in solitary confinement in Maine — was transferred to the Concord, NH prison where we met. In 2006 we became friends. In 2007 we became roommates. In 2010, on Divine Mercy Sunday, Pornchai renounced his troubled past to become Catholic. Later, in September 2010, I wrote “Saints Alive! Padre Pio and the Stigmata: Sanctity on Trial.”

That post told an amazing story. In an earlier visit with Pierre Matthews, I told him about Pornchai, about how our long and winding roads converged, and about Pornchai’s decision to renounce his past and become Catholic. Pierre told me a remarkable story. He said that when he was growing up in Belgium, his father sent him to a boarding school. In the 1950s, at just about the time I was born, Pierre’s school sponsored a trip to Italy. Pierre’s father wrote to him saying that his trip will take him near a place called San Giovanni Rotondo where there is a very famous priest and mystic who bears the wounds of Christ.

Pierre’s father instructed his skeptical 16-year-old son to take a train to San Giovanni Rotondo and ask to see Padre Pio. Being 16, Pierre did not want to go. But his father was insistent so Pierre read his Father’s account of Padre Pio’s mystical fame that was at the time being suppressed by the Church, but rising up from the sensus fidelium — the sense of the faithful.

When Pierre Matthews learned that Pornchai was to become Catholic, he sent me a registered letter asking — no, insisting — that he be permitted to become Pornchai’s Godfather. Pierre asked me to submit a special request to the prison warden asking approval for Pierre to fly over from Belgium to visit both me and Pornchai. In all the years that I had been here, such a thing was never allowed. No visitor can visit two prisoners at the same time. So I submitted the request with the intent of sending the denial back to Pierre. To my shock, the request came back with a single word: “approved.”

During the special visit, Pierre told us that he indeed took a train to San Giovanni Rotondo at age 16 over a half century earlier. He said he rang the monastery doorbell and asked a friar if he could see Padre Pio. “Impossible” came the curt reply. Pierre explained that his father had sent him from Belgium so the friar invited him inside to be given a prayer card to show his father that he was there. When he stepped inside to be given the card, a strange man in a Capuchin habit, with hands heavily bandaged, was just then walking down the stairs. His eyes were fixed upon Pierre, Padre Pio approached Pierre, placed his bandaged hands upon his head, and blessed him.

Visiting us 55 years later, Pierre said that he knows this blessing was meant for us. He spoke of the long, winding journey from faith that led to his learning about me, then about Pornchai, and then, when These Stone Walls began in 2009, it was what drew Pierre back to faith. It was then, in 2010, that I added Saint Padre Pio as one of the Patron Saints of These Stone Walls. Through Pornchai’s Godfather, Padre Pio shared his wounds with us and became a witness for the defense against our own wounds. It was Pierre who first noted that I was condemned to prison on September 23, 1994, the Feast of Saint Padre Pio.

Among the many letters of Padre Pio to the thousands of pilgrims and penitents who wrote to him, was one dated in the year before his death on September 23, 1968. In that letter, Padre Pio advised a suffering soul to enroll in the Knights at the Foot of the Cross, a spiritual mission founded by Father Maximilian Kolbe for the offering of life’s wounds as a share in the suffering of Christ. I was amazed to read that Padre Pio had such an awareness of our other patron saint two decades before St. Maximilian was canonized. Pornchai and I are both members of the Militia Immaculata and the Knights at the Foot of the Cross.

Our beloved friend Pierre, Pornchai’s Godfather, passed away in Belgium on July 7 this year. Pornchai and I were blessed to be able to talk with him by telephone in the weeks before his death. He never took redemption for granted, but I know with the certainty of faith that he and Padre Pio have renewed their bond.

So Pornchai, my son, if you are reading this then you must know that there is much more to our life’s wounds than the prison walls that surrounded us and surround me still. To be free of them is not just a matter of the body, but of the heart and soul. So be free. Be free enough to convey to others the great gifts imparted to us by these patron saints. You will no longer have a guest post at These Stone Walls. You will now be a partner in mission, writing from Divine Mercy Thailand about how God is inspiring hearts and souls through the transfiguration of your wounds.

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Please visit our Special Events page.

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Saints Maximilian Kolbe and Padre Pio were both canonized by Saint John Paul II.

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Imprisoned by Walls, Set Free by Wood — by Pornchai Moontri

Pornchai Maximilian Moontri takes us behind These Stone Walls where he is the safety trainer for a captive audience producing some woodcraft marvelous to behold.

“I will stand on my watch, take up my station at the post, and wait to see what He will say to me… For the stones shall cry out from these walls and the woodwork shall answer.”

— The Prophet Habakkuk 2:1,11

A lot has been happening here behind these stone walls. My friend, Father G has just started a new job as the one and only law library clerk serving 1,500 men in this prison. Every prison has to have a law library and a full-time clerk. So when the job came open he was asked if he would take it. It’s a real challenge for him because he took it on suddenly, and all his training is “on-the-job” training.

And his new job came with a pay raise. His pay jumped from $2.00 per day to $2.15 per day. We have been trying to figure out how he will spend that extra 75¢ cents per week. I earn the same pay he does, but prison work for both of us is not about how much we can make, but rather how many we can help.

So Father G spends his days behind a desk now, helping prisoners to complete and file hundreds of complicated state and federal legal forms for everything from legal motions, to medical planning, to power of attorney forms, legal medical releases, divorce petitions, and applications for drug court and addictions treatment. Father G eventually connects with just about everyone in this prison in the most difficult times of their lives.

He just finished his third week there and is still finding his way. This is why he asked me to write this guest post. We both work Monday through Friday from 07:00 AM until 2:30 PM, so now all the TSW posts have to be typed in our cell on Saturday. Well, Father G can type one on a Saturday. This one took me a week, one page at a time. People here ask me if the constant “tap-tap-tap” of the typewriter every Saturday drives me crazy, but for me it is like music. It is our connection with you.

I also have a job that I like very much. I have been working on my own projects in the woodworking shop that is part of the “HobbyCraft” project here. Last year I also became the Safety Trainer. I teach new workers in the woodworking shop how to use all the equipment, and how to map out their projects to order the wood that they will need.

Prisoners in the wood shop purchase their own lumber from a local vendor, and then I show them how to use a Radial Arm Saw to cut the rough lumber. I also train them on using the planers, chop saw, table saws, band saws, routers, shapers, and the lathes which are in three sizes for woodturning projects.

I also save to purchase wood for my own projects. Most of the items I have created in recent years are smaller items such as keepsake boxes, a Divine Mercy box, mantle clocks, and wood-turned pen sets made from olive wood imported from the Holy Land.

Lots of the items I have made are featured on a Pinterest board called “Woodworking and Model Shipbuilding by Pornchai Maximilian Moontri.” Below is the most recent keepsake box that I designed and crafted from mahogany with a basswood inlay in the top engraved with a wood burned image of the Praying Hands. The inside is finished with velour.

I have lately been working on some larger furniture projects.

The photo at the top of this post is me with a round dining table that I designed and created. It is solid maple, 48-inches in diameter and 32-inches in height. Below is another photo of the same table emphasizing the legs which are also solid maple wood-turned with a lathe. I have just been asked to custom build a slightly smaller version of the same table.

The table below is called a sofa table. It is made from solid cortisone oak and the legs are made from cherry. It is 30-inches high and 36-inches in length.

The cabinet below was custom-made to requested specifications. It is made from cherry with raised panel doors. It is 48-inches high.

But as wonderful as it is to work with wood, none of this is the wood that sets me free. That comes Holy Week. Behold the wood of the Cross on which hung the Salvation of the world.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this post on Facebook and other social media. The story of Pornchai Moontri is an epic of immense importance for the cause of social justice and for the Church. As Catholics consider leaving their faith over the abuse scandal, Pornchai found the only healing and hope he has ever known in the Catholic Church.

A ship designed and built by Pornchai Moontri for a special order.