Posted by parhad (158.252.222.147) on October 11, 2001 at 16:45:57:
In Reply to: Interview from 1996, I believe posted by Jeff on October 11, 2001 at 10:53:36:
A good man. I told him I didn't hold it against him that he was a priest. Benny is a wonderful man in every way except for his insistence on climbing up on that cross. He said he didn't know what he would do if the Vatican ever ordered him someplace else, somewhere without Assyrians in need of his particular help. He also said he would work with the devil himself to help our people, as any saint would.
He's aparently ill now, or has been, or maybe he's overstayed his welcome in a country where religion was only recently banned or suppressed. I hear he wants to leave...and go work among Africans. Many Assyrian communities are eager to have him come be their priest here, but he's not their man. He related once how furious he'd become as a passle of our usual men of god told him what good lives they were leading here, cars, cell phones, expenses...all the ass of any variety even a priest could handle. To his remarks about how terrible conditions were for our people there one man of god had said, "well, at least the rats eat well." That was in response to a story about Benny having to rush a woman to her grave with the rats working away at her.
If I could think of anything to say to get him sacked I would...or inspire him to come out here where there is no stipend, where all sorts of people labor for others without a Vatican to back them up, without the special status a priest enjoys, even when he is flesh eating rat. I'd rather inspire him, but Benny, like many a man of God, has a dead spot, a cold place somewhere on the heart...that all the ministrations to the poor can't warm up.
I respect him in spite of it all, not because of it.
Benny, say it aint so.