He will be “a priest forever, like Melchizedek of old.”
RIP
Amen to that!
Wow-newly ordained, then dying in the grace of Holy Orders!
Reminds me of the story of a young seminarian from the NY Archdiocese, who was stricken with cancer. His ordination to the priesthood was ‘fast-tracked’ by Blessed John Paul II, through the intervention of the seminarian’s father (a permanent deacon) and Cardinal John O’Connor of New York. The Holy Father gave the permission ‘with all his heart’.
The young man was ordained a deacon, then a priest, literally on his deathbed. And the only ‘priestly act’ he could do in his last hours was to trace the Sign of the Cross on the palm of a friend’s hand.
He kept a diary during his illness, and after his death, Father Benedict Groeschel wrote a biography from it called ‘A Priest Forever’. I remember the young man died in 1997, the centennial year of St. Therese’s death, who prayed and offered her sufferings for priests and missionaries.
God bless Father Turner of the UK, and may his priestly soul rest in peace!
