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.

The late Monsignor Richard Albert died at age 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 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.

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.

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.

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.