Priests can also surrender their demons. Evidence is that Father Claude Paradis confessed in the book Confessions of a Street Priest (Confessions d'un prêtre de la rue, Novalis publishing house, 2018).
With two tattooed arms, two hands covered with metal rings, a hat on his head, and old jeans, "street priest Claude Paradis" is definitely not the top role model when we think of the heroes. representative of the Church.
Almost every day of the week, we can see this 63-year-old priest on the streets, especially at the Place d'Armes metro station, where he distributes food to the homeless. Or at Leclerc prison in Laval city, where he celebrated Mass for female prisoners.
If he was trusted by people on the street, it was because he belonged to the same "gang" as them, as he himself admitted: "Compared to many people, I am worse than them."
Go to hell
When he was 14 years old, Claude Paradis started drinking and smoking drugs. And a few years later, he lived on the streets, but when he was 33 years old, he realized he had "hit bottom".
“I smoked, I thought about suicide. One afternoon, I was walking on Sainte-Catherine Street and I entered the small church of Our Lady of Lourdes. I told God: “You have two choices, either You take my life; or God gives my life a meaning.”
Some time later, he entered the seminary "with shoulder-length hair and sneakers," he recalled with a hint of sadness in his eyes.
But even when I became God's representative on earth, hell still lived in the depths of my soul.
He talked about this period when he was a priest at Saint Vincent's Church in Montreal: "I could go without smoking for a few months, then I would smoke again... I didn't want to, but there was something strong." more than I, my body system needs. I'm tired".
In moments of weakness, Dad used coke once a week. Father recalled, his voice faltering: “It became like a habit every Sunday afternoon. I started with a beer and the beer led me to coke.”
At that time, my father also drank beer at least once every two days until he got drunk. However, I guarantee that I will never celebrate Mass while drunk.
One afternoon, while my father was smoking, he fainted. Father admitted, his voice confused: “It was a huge blow to what I was about to say, so that I could be as transparent as possible. I slept with a woman when I was a priest. Then they both smoked. After that, I was really not good with these things."
Feeling guilty
The weight was heavy on my shoulders during my first years as a priest, and ironically, I was the one whose job it was to celebrate life for others when I thought about suicide.
“My use of drugs caused me to be taken away from my priestly job, I was not good to myself. Because I know, I'm not right in some sense. But this is so much stronger than me.”
After each suicide attempt, I was sent to the psychiatric ward. Father recalled: “Around me, there were patients wearing helmets, banging their heads against the wall. They scream, they scream. I said to myself ‘what am I doing here?’ The psychiatrists also asked what a priest was doing here.”
Father stayed here for only a day or two and then was sent back: “The psychiatrists said this is not my place, because I am aware of what I am living, that I am where I am.”
My fellow parishioners know my addiction problem. Finally, the priest found help at New Steps Hospital, they have a two-month detoxification program with the consent of the diocese.
Father recalls: “I remember before going to therapy, I thought I was going to ‘play hard’. I smoked coke all night. I went to the clinic, the doctor asked me to raise my left hand, I couldn't raise it. Then they decided to keep me."
All are human
If I decide to tell my life story, it is to relieve the burden of my actions.
His testimony is told in the book Confessions of a Street Priest, published in October 2018, in the form of storytelling with actor Jean-Marie Lapointe, his close friend. “This is something to set me free, to give me a second chance,” Father said. I need to say it, I need to prove, yes, I need to prove that we can get out, no matter what we are, no matter how far we go.”
I hope that this is a "help" book that will humanize the role of the priest. Father realized: “Nowadays there is no longer a time when the priest is on the altar, speaking the ultimate words. We are all human.”
After 17 years of sobriety, Dad learned to live with his demons. His work adapts to his past; he now celebrates Mass with grape juice, after receiving the approval of Pope John Paul II. Behind the priest's robe, the real father is still the father. Today I focus on helping, making a difference and helping each person one by one.
What brought Dad out onto the street?
Father Claude Paradis often said, "It was the street that brought me to church, and the church that brought me to the street."
Father said: “When I smoked, I felt unworthy, I felt like I was nothing. People on the street say all kinds of things and they believe it, for example they say, 'you will never do anything good, you are a good-for-nothing person'. For me, the important thing now is to go and tell them, tell them, they think this is not right at all, to give them the trust that they gave me."
After finishing the seminary, it was a young street man who gave him the task of returning to where he started. “The young man was in the laughing stage of his life at the hospital, after having stayed in 6 to 7 temporary homes. He told me: 'No one has ever seen me live, do you want to see me die?'. Before he died, he added: ‘Father helps me, but who will help the others who are still on the street?’ And that is how I accepted the mission.”
Every year in September, he holds funerals at St. Francis cemetery for the unclaimed dead. Every year there are hundreds of people like that in the city of Montreal, usually people living on the streets or prostitutes, who have no relatives or family to take care of them after they die. Every week, street priests also celebrate Masses outdoors or at Leclerc women's prison, in the city of Laval.
His eyes lit up, Father Paradis said: “Whoever they are, whatever they are, they have the right to receive human dignity. Humans always have a divine part within them. And my duty is to be here.”
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