Father Joe

by Tony Hendra

Published 1 February 1975
Like everything human, it started with sex. In 1955, fourteen-year-old Tony found himself entangled with a married Catholic woman. When the woman's husband learnt of their involvement, he whisked Tony off to see a priest and be saved. The priest was Father Joe, a gentle, stammering, ungainly Benedictine monk. And during the next forty years, as his life and career drastically ebbed and flowed, Tony discovered that his visits to Father Joe remained the one constant in his life the relationship that, in the most serious sense, saved it.