A white American man sitting astride a powerful motorbike, puffing cigars and lyming with feared gunmen in some of Kingston’s meanest ghettos is not the typical image of a holy priest of God. Or a devout servant of the Roman Catholic Church.

Monsignor Richard Albert who died Monday evening, aged 69, defied the usual epithet that religiously follow the passing of men whose lives were dedicated to serving God and man. And the unkind irony is that he died, not in the time of celebration and national acclaim that he once enjoyed, but living alone in a country that he first hated but then came to love with the passion of a home-grown patriot.

The infamous names of ‘Natty Morgan’ and ‘Sandokhan’, ruthless ‘shottas’ who became cult heroes in the dark underworld, would be associated with Albert, who would deliver to them private sermons in places most Jamaicans would dare not enter. They would nickname him the “Ghetto Priest”.

The circumstances of Albert’s arrival in Jamaica were set in motion long before he became acquainted with the place that the awestruck Christopher Columbus described as “the fairest isle mine eyes ever beheld”. It was a script that could only have been written in Heaven itself and he would find that, like all true men of God, his own demons would sorely beset him round.

It began in 1976, a year of political turmoil when the East-West Cold War fought its nastiest battle on Jamaican soil, manifested in the bruising encounters between the pro-Cuba democratic socialist administration of Michael Manley and the pro-American pro-free enterprise Opposition of Edward Seaga. Some of the most violent conflicts took place in the sprawling slums of Kingston’s west end. But men of God were plotting otherwise.

Within the church, the doctrine of ecumenism extolled the virtue of embracing the commonality of all religions, and those who did so believed they were fulfilling the Biblical injunction “…that they all may be one”. The ecumenical wave swept over the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church in Jamaica, as it did with nearly all the traditional churches and faiths.

In what seemed like mere coincidence, both the head of the Catholics, Archbishop of Kingston Samuel Carter, and the Anglican Lord Bishop of Jamaica Herbert Edmondson separately and unknown to each approached the Matalon-led West Indies Home Contractors for land to build a church in Bridgeport, St Catherine.

Matalon suggested they build one church which both would share, to allow for more houses to be built. The suggestion, even if Matalon might not have known it at the time, was perfectly in keeping with the ecumenical movement.

Interestingly, the idea came within the first 10 years of the closing of the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church, a document which focuses on ecumenism. So Archbishop Carter warmed to the idea.

Hated being sent to Jamaica

And so came forth the idea of the Church of the Reconciliation that both denominations would own and operate, with one service beginning when the other ended. On Sunday afternoon September 4, 1977, the Church of the Reconciliation was officially opened jointly by Archbishop Carter and Lord Bishop Edmondson.

In the late summer of 1976 while the church was still under construction, Bronx, New York-born Father Richard Albert, along with Father Martin Carter, an African-American — both being Friars of the Atonement — was assigned by his Roman Catholic Superior to work in Jamaica.

Albert later confessed to a Catholic writer that he hated the assignment and expressed his anger to the Superior. It was speculated that Albert felt he was being banished to the impoverished Caribbean island as a consequence of disagreements with the Father Superior, which had led to a one-year delay in his ordination.

But the 30-year-old priest, a Jew, had not yet tasted the infectious charm and the depth of the hospitality of the Jamaican people. In time he would fall hopelessly in love with them and would surrender his American citizenship for Jamaican.

Walking into church history

Albert also arrived in Jamaica to be part of religious history. No one seemed to have any records as to when, if ever, a joint church, owned by both the Roman Catholic and the Anglican churches, existed in any other part of the world. It was truly a special occasion and an enduring symbol of church unity. Fr Martin Carter was appointed the first Catholic pastor, with Fr Albert as associate pastor. The first Anglican pastor was Fr Edmund Davis, who was also general secretary of the umbrella Jamaica Council of Churches.

Church unity was right up Albert’s street. Reports say that he was a convert to Roman Catholicism. He had joined the celibate order of the Church that was devoted to ecumenism and founded by Father Paul James Wattson. The order, founded in 1899, was originally of the Anglican communion, but the entire order converted to Roman Catholicism in 1909. And the spiritual model of the order was Saint Francis of Assisi.

Albert, along with Father Martin Carter and later Father Jack Lewis, worked to develop churches in nearby Braeton and Waterford. They also took charge of the old church in Christian Pen. In Braeton they met at the government clinic, while in Waterford they met at the home of the late deacon Riley Hibbert.

Albert developed soup kitchens in Gregory Park and in Old Braeton, responding to the needs of the many poor and indigent who would often go without food.

In the mid-1980s, Father Albert resigned from the Atonements after a second major disagreement with his Superior, this time about being transferred out of Jamaica which, by now, he had decided would be his permanent home. He became a diocesan priest in the Archdiocese of Kingston. He was soon after assigned to St Patrick’s Church and later founded St Patrick’s Foundation to be a symbol of hope and an advocate for the poor and destitute of the inner cities.

Most wanted: Natty Morgan and Sandokhan

No squalor was too horrid for him to enter. He was once seen walking barefooted in mud-coloured flood waters. The scene invoked a notion of the Transfiguration. A white man wading through the swirling waters, his reddened face a mask of determination, his white priestly frock raised to his knees to avoid the muck, his shaven head glistening in the sun as it emerged from behind rain clouds.

He paid many a school fee for children of hapless parents and visited prisoners to offer comfort and point them to a better way of life. Albert spoke out against the death penalty every chance he got, arguing that it was mostly poor young men — some of whom were sponsored by politicians — who ended up on the gallows.

He was in frequent communication with the underworld, especially in Waterhouse where St Patrick’s Church is situated. Through this contact he baptised many converts. Two of his most infamous contacts were Nathaniel ‘Natty’ Morgan and Wayne ‘Sandokhan’ Smith, both of whom were on the police most wanted list but who were celebrated in the inner city as like unto Britain’s fabled Robin Hood who stole from the rich to give to the poor.

He was once accused of speaking out of turn by the then national security minister, the late Errol Anderson, who said Albert was hampering police from apprehending Natty Morgan. It was never clear if either Morgan or Sandokhan, both of whom met famous deaths, were converted by Albert.

Father Albert was a staple on radio talk shows, speaking out against the social conditions of Jamaicans. In 1989, Radio Jamaica wanted him to host their Hotline current affairs show in place of Wilmot Perkins who was moving on to KLAS-FM. He was not granted a work permit because as the then Government said “if RJR wanted a Roman Catholic priest to host a radio programme there were many Jamaican priests that they could ask”.

In 1991, Father Albert was made an honorary prelate of the Vatican, which comes with the title of Monsignor, an award usually given to priests who have been so recommended by a bishop. In the late 1990s, he was appointed pastor of Stella Maris Church serving the affluent communities of upper St Andrew mainly in the postal area of Kingston 8.

But the community also takes in Grant’s Pen, which is a depressed inner-city area. There he co-founded a version of the St Patrick’s Foundation called the Stella Maris Foundation and found common cause with the rights group Jamaicans For Justice.

Breaching church tenets

At the height of his popularity, Monsignor Albert was appointed Episcopal Vicar to the priests and was styled the Right Rev Monsignor Richard Albert. He would later lose the title and his standing after being accused of breaching the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church.

If he had legions of admirers, Albert also had detractors, not the least of whom included some of his fellow priests who argued that his attitude was as of one who had come here to set Jamaica right. They offered the suggestion that the fault was not only in his stars. For many Jamaicans tended to worship Caucasians, and that might well have gone to his head. Albert’s friends shot back that they begrudged him.

But no one seemed to disagree that Albert would always be remembered for his generosity, for his ability to walk with kings and at the same time with the poorest of the land. Among his many friends were some of Jamaica’s richest and most powerful.

But Monsignor Albert was most comfortable serving and moving among the poor where he found his true calling.

— With additional reporting by Michael Burke, a member of the Roman Catholic Church and weekly columnist with the Jamaica Observer.