OUR LEADER

1943


Quis consurget mihi adversus malignantes?
Aut quis stabit mecum adversus operantes iniquitatem?

Who will rise up for me against the evildoers?
Or who will stand up for me against the wicked?
PSALM 93:16




HIS LOWEST HOUR? -- It was a pensive young priest in this unposed snapshot picture, facing a most uncertain future that winter of 1943 in Hitler-occupied Belgium: hungry, cold, still hunted as an escaped prisoner-of-war, and now with a "death by firing squad" sentence hanging over his head for what the Nazi occupiers labeled "aid to the enemy," but what in reality had been Father's giving the Last Rites, October 9, 1943, -- the first time in his priestly career, -- to two dying British Royal Air Force aviators shot down over East Flanders.